ANTONE KÖNST

Könst’s approach begins with a trope. Compelled on some personal level, an image sticks with him; a juggler, a monkey, a goat. The familiar and at times cliché images, which are informed by archival sources and pop culture references, are altered and reimagined to suit the variety of mediums in Könst’s practice. A juggler becomes a repeated idea, pulling into its orbit the movements of the sun, the stillness of time, the birth of a child.

A part of this exhibition is composed of plaster and resin tablets which straddle painting and object. The thick molded works are shaped, colored, carved on, and imbedded with a mélange of materials. Their pastoral subjects often call to mind frescos, though unlike the figurative paintings, these glyphic tablets possess abstract forms and qualities. Untitled, 2017, an earlier tablet composed of resin, plastic, cardboard, and wood features script-like forms across its surface. In the upper right side of the work cardboard shapes form a sun sitting on a horizon. This motif is transferred to painting in later works like Sunbather, 2020 and Moon Rising, from Assateague Island, 2019. Through these earlier glyphic works we are able to see the repetition of symbols.

Shown alongside these wall hanging works are selection of sculptures. Könst’s sculptural works come from the same place conceptually as his painting practice, though allow for a directness and a more experimental mode of creation. These sculptural works are site specific and made uniquely for “Casual Magic”, and create a deeper sense of connection to the context of Taipei.

“Casual Magic” also features a new genre of painting in Könst’s practice, the landscape. Inspired by a camping trip with his wife, and Monet’s immersive water lily paintings, these new landscapes are without the living creatures so often found in his works, and instead personify their tree trunk subjects.

The prevalence of animals found in Könst’s work serves as a nod towards aspects of Asian art he draws from in his archival digging. This is most clear in the paintings Monkey, 2019 and Small Monkey, 2017-2018 which reference Mizaru, one of the Three Wise Monkeys from the Japanese pictorial maxim, embodying the proverbial principle “see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.” Where the Western Art Canon utilized animal forms as signifiers of class and property, animals in Chinese and Japanese traditional art often reference parables, the mythological and the spiritual.

Throughout “Casual Magic” figures are shown basking in the glow of some form of light. Whether it’s the moon hanging between two trees romantically, or a sunbather in a moment of beatific contentment and joy, a prevailing sense of affection can be read across the frozen moments Könst creates. Could this be anything but casual magic?