Works · Series 2025 · 12 works
Homage to the Forest
The forest is a singular, secret habitat, and it has much to show and teach us — much of it happening in the hidden and the inconspicuous. Something uniquely mysterious shines out of it, and not only in the old tales and fairy stories. Sometimes dark and threatening, then again a green oasis flooded with light.
In the works of C.F.J. König it is much the same. Little is grasped at first glance, little is immediately and completely legible. It takes time to activate the natural key stimuli, to make out the hidden details and figures in his paintings. Only those who let themselves in for it come a step closer to the mysterious realm of the colours. Only then do the concealed beauties reveal themselves, still slumbering in the hidden, and their stories begin to be told. Change the angle of view and those details grow more compelling still — details not even perceived at first sight. From then on the things shown, which at first seemed to have no bearing on one another, begin to form a common whole. When that mystery is fully revealed, the continuum of space and time dissolves. Retrospection, introspection, foresight and confrontation flow seamlessly together. Then the truth has shown itself.
The artist plays with the possibilities of perceiving figurative representation: like other living creatures, we humans are programmed to respond to particular visual key stimuli. Setting those stimuli, so that the viewer can take in his work with understanding, has become more and more the artist's task. His works present a closed system holding several meanings within it. Disorder seems to reign in them — and yet they open up undreamt-of possibilities to every viewer. Much of what is to be seen in these works has, at first glance, no connection to the rest. But in longer looking, contents become more visible and the various details of a picture take on a relation to one another. König's paintings establish new relations to our real world. They seduce us into pausing, and into fathoming what we see.