Homeland – exhibition by Austrian artist Christian Franz Joseph König
The internationally established Austrian artist Christian Franz Joseph König
trained as a graphic artist after completing a Catholic gymnasium in Vienna. His
first solo exhibition was held in 1980 at the Gallery Junge Kunstwerkstatt in
Vienna. He worked as a graphic artist and artistic director in several national
and international advertising agencies and further studied in evening drawing
courses at the Vienna University of Applied Arts, which reinforced his already
prominent talent for figural art.
In gallery at Bogenšperk Castle, he presents himself with abstract figural
images connected by thinking about the different homelands of man and artist in
the contemporary world.
In the last years of the 20th century, the figurative painting was slightly pushed
sideways due to new artistic directions and artistic interspaces. Although it was
retained as an art form and as a way of interpreting modern society and the
world in general. König established a new technical principle with which he
could achieve the ultimate desired effect of multi-layer painting and applying
colours. He sketched the world and the figures around him. Usually he
transferred his observation on to the art base in the studio, and translated them
into images mounted in the infinite depths of colour and art spaces. His
assistants, painters such as F. Kindl and Theo Braun, played an important role in
the creation of the artwork. Douangjan of Ramkhamhaeng University in
Bangkok played a key role in its creation.
The exhibition at Bogenšperk Castle presents different homelands in a complex
concept. He is considering homeland as assembling deep bonds between man
and space. So, at the same time, he is exploring homeland and considering its
different perspectives. He is particularly interested in the attitude of modern
man towards his homeland. The works surprise the visitor as he firstly stares at
the abstract and extremely colourful works, which at the same time hide the
contours of human figures and the spaces of everyday world. Through the
colourful transparent wall, the human figures appear as distant ilusions of
different homelands. The presented works are supposed to arouse key stimuli in
the viewer through colour and figures to understand their meaning. Therefore, it
seems that there is a mess in the artwork, but with prolonged viewing and
reflection, we find that the images are connected in a system with many
meanings. The various stimuli open up many connections to the viewer's sub-
conscious, while also creating a thread of the entire oeuvre of the exhibited
works. It seems like they were created in one move. It is as they are organized
in the huge polyptych of different visual places, homelands and references to
the current world. The artist and the viewer connect at the same point when the
images start to turn into annoying, disturbing and in “a certain wayforced”
stimuli.
Therefore, König is considering a number of fields and different perceptions of
individuals with different identities and different homelands. When exploring
the love of homelands, he comes to its own conclusion (and I quote): "For me, a
personal homeland means much more than just the physical space, space where
I was born or where I live. There are many places in this world where I felt
good and with whom I could identify. These places have different cultures and
traditions that I have been able to discover and which have expanded my view
of the world. "
So dear audience I kindly invite you to see the colourful, many homelands of
modern man and artist.
mag. Ana Kocjančič