Works · Series 2014 · 45 works

ICH-Ideal ein Skizze des freud´schen Denkens2014

Things Are Getting Colourful in the Expedithalle
With its 2,000 square metres of space in the former Anker Bread Factory, the Expedithalle is about to burst into colour.
In this extraordinary setting, artist C.F.J. König presents his new series of paintings, “ICHideal.” In these works, he boldly engages with Sigmund Freud and the continuing influence of Freud’s ideas on the present day.
C.F.J. König explains:
“Interpreting Sigmund Freud in the new millennium and giving a face to his thoughts and statements is a major challenge—one that requires a considerable amount of courage on my part.”
At first glance, the works appear abstract. On closer inspection, however, they become figurative, allowing human bodies to emerge into the foreground. Depending on the viewing angle, the shifting fields of colour create changing scenarios that are difficult to escape. They make the viewer want to “SEE MORE” in the truest sense of the phrase.
The expressive, large-format paintings and the artist’s virtuoso handling of materials are highly impressive, suggesting an even greater sense of space and depth.
The name Sigmund Freud is familiar to almost everyone. As the founder of psychoanalysis, he developed various theories throughout his life concerning the causes and structures of the human psyche. In his structural model of the mind, Freud distinguishes between three agencies into which the human psyche is divided: the id, the ego, and the superego.
Put simply, the superego can be understood as our moral authority or conscience. It develops during early childhood and contains the moral standards and internalised values of the cultural and social environment in which an individual grows up.
The id, by contrast, is its opposing force. It represents our basic drives and reflects the “untamed animal” within us. It is biological in nature and concerned with primal urges and the satisfaction of desire.
As Freud’s theory suggests, in a newborn baby that simply cries when it is hungry or in pain, the id is still dominant. Later, however, the id also encompasses desires and emotions such as jealousy, sexuality, envy, love, and hatred.
The id is kept under control by the superego, which acts as a kind of regulator. At the same time, however, the superego forces us into a corset of behavioural rules and values—primarily taught or demonstrated to us by our parents—which may leave us with little opportunity to express our most personal wishes and needs or to live according to our authentic selves.
This is where the third agency, the ego, comes into play. The ego acts as a mediator between the id and the superego.
The ego represents our conscious personality. It examines the unconscious demands of the superego and the id according to the reality principle and makes decisions by means of critical reason. It weighs the commands and prohibitions of the superego against the id’s demands for instinctual satisfaction and may, for example, respond by postponing the gratification of a particular drive.
All the decisions and inner conflicts negotiated between these three agencies provide us with an image of human psychological processes and, in doing so, offer an insight into the human soul.
“The ego,” Sigmund Freud wrote in 1923, “is first and foremost a bodily ego; it is not merely a surface entity, but is itself the projection of a surface.”
It is precisely this surface that inspired the artist C.F.J. König to give Freud’s structures of thought a face in his new series of paintings, “ICHideal.”
Curator: Dr Edith Risse