Perchtoldsdorf: Atelier C.F.J. König | On Saturday, 17 November 2012, from 7:00 p.m., C.F.J. König invites visitors to his studio at Wiener Gasse 45 in Perchtoldsdorf to view new works from his cycle Love-Hate-Fear-Sex-Money-Crime.
We all have an image of ourselves. I have one too. We carry it in our minds, encounter it in the mirror, recognise it in photographs. Sometimes it appears in a painting or a sculpture.
But which of these images is real? Which one is true?
Perhaps they all are, in some way. And perhaps none of them fully are.
The image we present on social media is especially questionable. What was once meant to connect people has, in many cases, become strangely detached from real human contact. That shift is unsettling.
Every year, around 100,000 people undergo cosmetic procedures, whether through surgery or injections of various substances.
Why?
Perhaps because appearance has become a form of presentation. An image to be shown, judged and approved. The person in the mirror may feel increasingly inadequate, while the person presented to the outside world becomes more polished, more controlled and more carefully constructed.
What is disturbing is how similar these constructions are becoming.
Faces and bodies are adjusted towards the same ideals. Individuality gives way to repetition. The result is not greater uniqueness, but increasing uniformity.
And the conversation changes with it. Instead of speaking about character, ability, work or achievement, attention shifts to the latest procedure: whether it worked, whether it is visible, whether it was worth it.
At the same time, the pressure to optimise the self reaches ever younger people. Features once accepted as personal characteristics are increasingly perceived as flaws. They begin to feel like disadvantages — in private life, in public perception and even in professional life.
And for what?
Perhaps, in the end, for a few more likes.
This is not intended as a complaint about the present day, nor as a rejection of change. It is an expression of unease from someone whose work is concerned with looking beneath surfaces.
My interest lies in what remains when appearance is stripped away: the substance of things, of people, of the world itself.
That is what I look for.
And that is what I try to make visible in my work.