... with Arghavan Khosravi on Persian Miniature Painting and the Shape of Absence

... with Arghavan Khosravi on Persian Miniature Painting and the Shape of Absence

In this episode, Johann König talks to Arghavan Khosravi, an Iranian-born, US-based artist whose layered, architecturally complex paintings are currently on display in THE SHAPE OF ABSENCE at König Galerie in Berlin. Khosravi took an unusual route to becoming a painter: she was surrounded by her father's work in traditional Persian Islamic architecture as a child, then took a detour into graphic design and illustration before finally deciding to focus fully on painting at the Rhode Island School of Design. She reflects on what art school can and cannot teach and explains why, at its best, grad school helps an artist find their own voice rather than reproduce someone else's. The conversation centres on Khosravi's distinctive visual language, which features shaped panels growing out of the wall, multi-layered surfaces combining wood, canvas, and plexiglass, and a symbolic vocabulary drawn from Persian miniature painting, Renaissance altarpieces, and coded imagery such as pomegranates, hands, cages, and hourglasses. She discusses the figures that appear throughout her work — women whose faces remain neutral, composed and deliberately unreadable — and explains why this absence of visible emotion is a form of power in itself. The two also discuss what it meant to grow up amid the tension between private and public life in post-revolutionary Iran, how this experience of duality became the structural logic of her entire practice, and how the Woman Life Freedom movement connected to work she had been creating long before the world was watching. More about the ARTIST [https://www.koeniggalerie.com/collections/arghavan-khosravi] More about the EXHIBITION [https://www.koeniggalerie.com/blogs/exhibitions/arghavan-khosravi-the-shape-of-absence] Follow Johann König on his social media channels: Instagram [https://www.instagram.com/johann.koenig/] Facebook [https://www.facebook.com/johannkoenigberlin/] LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/johann-k%C3%B6nig-39b895128/] X [https://x.com/johannkoenig] If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to contact us by email at: info@koeniggalerie.com [info@koeniggalerie.com] Photo by Hossein Fatemi © Courtesy of the artist

... with Jordy Kerwick on Instinct, Failure, and Teaching Yourself to Paint

In this episode, Johann König speaks with Australian-born, France-based painter Jordy Kerwick about his journey from failed entrepreneur to internationally exhibited artist—and what it means to build a practice entirely outside the traditional art world path. Kerwick traces his unlikely entry into painting: a wife who banned band posters, a trip to France, and an obsession with the lives of Matisse, Modigliani, and Yves Klein that quickly turned into an obsession with making. With no formal training, he taught himself to paint horizontally on a kitchen bench, posting work on Instagram every night after long days managing gyms and a failing football college—until painting became the only thing left standing. The conversation moves through the textures of his practice: the shift from still lifes to interiors, rugs, totems, and his new paintings being made for his upcoming show at KÖNIG GALERIE. Kerwick talks about thinking in palette before subject matter, about the philosophy embedded in his two-jawed totems—one mouth to love and nourish, one to take it all away—and about why his new exhibition, THIS TIME TOMORROW, takes its name from a Kinks song about an uncertain future glimpsed from within the present. He also speaks candidly about the secondary market chaos that followed his early success, the realities of shipping costs reshaping the global art market, and why, for all the complications of living in rural southern France, he has no regrets and no shortage of ideas. More about the ARTIST [https://www.koeniggalerie.com/collections/jordy-kerwick] More about the EXHIBITION [https://www.koeniggalerie.com/blogs/exhibitions/jordy-kerwick-this-time-tomorrow] Follow Johann König on his social media channels: Instagram [https://www.instagram.com/johann.koenig/] Facebook [https://www.facebook.com/johannkoenigberlin/] LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/johann-k%C3%B6nig-39b895128/] X [https://x.com/johannkoenig] If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to contact us by email at: info@koeniggalerie.com [info@koeniggalerie.com] Photo by Mathieu Douziech © Courtesy of the artist

... mit Alexander Wertheim über das Malen gegen die eigene Ordnung

In dieser Folge spricht Johann König mit dem Berliner Maler Alexander Wertheim anlässlich seiner Ausstellung FUGUE IN OXIDE bei KÖNIG TELEGRAPHENAMT. Die beiden unterhalten sich darüber, wie Wertheim aus der Musik zur Malerei kam, warum er lieber bei Bildhauern als bei Malern studiert hat und was Karomuster aus Indien mit seiner abstrakten Arbeit zu tun haben. Im Mittelpunkt steht Wertheims Arbeitsweise: Ein strenges, selbst auferlegtes System aus parallelen Linien und Farbtönen, das er gleichzeitig malerisch durch Geste, Transparenz und bewusst zugelassene Unschärfe in Frage stellt. Er erklärt, warum er fünf nahezu identische Bilder malt, um am Ende nur eines zu behalten und was es bedeutet, Leichtigkeit mit akribischer Planung herzustellen. Außerdem: Warum seine Werke im internationalen Ausland mehr Anklang finden als in Deutschland – und was ein Kommentar wie „Looks like graduated from Kindergarten" eigentlich über denjenigen sagt, der ihn schreibt. Mehr Infos über den KÜNSTLER [https://www.koeniggalerie.com/collections/alexander-wertheim] Mehr zur AUSSTELLUNG [https://www.koeniggalerie.com/blogs/exhibitions/alexander-wertheim-fugue-in-oxide] Folgt Johann König auf seinen Social-Media-Kanälen: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/johann.koenig/ [https://www.instagram.com/johann.koenig/] Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/johannkoenigberlin/ [https://www.facebook.com/johannkoenigberlin/] LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johann-k%C3%B6nig-39b895128/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/johann-k%C3%B6nig-39b895128/] X: https://x.com/johannkoenig [https://x.com/johannkoenig] Bei Fragen oder Anmerkungen wendet euch gerne via Mail an: info@koeniggalerie.com [info@koeniggalerie.com] Portrait by KÖNIG GALERIE © Courtesy of the artist

... mit Franziska von Oppenheim über Sammeln und Zugänge zur Kunst

In dieser Folge von WAS MIT KUNST spricht Johann König mit der Personalvermittlerin und Kunstsammlerin Franziska von Oppenheim über Zugänge zur Kunst, neue Formen des Sammelns und die Frage, wie der Kunstmarkt offener werden kann. Von Oppenheim kommt aus einer kunstaffinen Berliner Familie und fand früh über Kunst, Modejournalismus und Medien in die Kunstwelt. Nach Stationen unter anderem bei Monopol, dem Zeitmagazin und der KÖNIG GALERIE arbeitet sie heute in einer Personalvermittlung für den internationalen Kunst- und Kulturbetrieb. Im Gespräch gibt sie Einblicke in einen oft unsichtbaren Teil des Kunstbetriebs: Wie werden Direktorinnen, Geschäftsführer oder leitende Positionen in Galerien und Museen gefunden? Welche Rolle spielen Diskretion, Netzwerke und internationale Erfahrung? Und wie verändert sich der Arbeitsmarkt im Kunstbereich zwischen New York, London, Paris, Berlin, dem Nahen Osten und Asien? Auch ihre eigene junge Sammlung ist Thema. Von Oppenheim spricht über Kunst als emotionale Begleiterin, über erste Käufe auf Messen und Auktionen, über Editionen, Originale und die Frage, wann ein Werk nicht nur an Wert, sondern auch an persönlicher Bedeutung gewinnt. Dabei geht es auch um Schwellenängste: Warum fühlen sich Galerien für viele Menschen unzugänglich an? Wie lassen sich Räume schaffen, in denen Begegnung, Gespräch und Sammeln selbstverständlicher werden? Und warum kann Transparenz helfen, Vertrauen in den Kunstmarkt aufzubauen? Folgt Johann König auf seinen Social-Media-Kanälen: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/johann.koenig/ [https://www.instagram.com/johann.koenig/] Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/johannkoenigberlin/ [https://www.facebook.com/johannkoenigberlin/] LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johann-k%C3%B6nig-39b895128/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/johann-k%C3%B6nig-39b895128/] X: https://x.com/johannkoenig [https://x.com/johannkoenig] Bei Fragen oder Anmerkungen wendet euch gerne via Mail an: info@koeniggalerie.com [info@koeniggalerie.com] © Portrait Rixa Fürsen

... with Hugo Ruyant on Comics and the Art of Leaving Things Unfinished

In this live episode of WAS MIT KUNST, recorded in front of an audience at KÖNIG GALERIE, Johann König speaks with French painter Hugo Ruyant about painting as a conversation, the influence of comics, and how images generate meaning beyond what they directly depict. The full conversation is also available as a video on Spotify and YouTube [https://youtu.be/ASqQTz3hBik?si=1M_pJWyYZ1WQFGeq]. Drawing was Ruyant’s first creative language. As a child, he imagined becoming a comic book artist before discovering illustration, printmaking, and eventually painting. He describes printmaking as a formative school of seeing—one that taught him to deconstruct images, understand their histories, and reflect on how we consume visual culture. The conversation takes place on the occasion of his exhibition LEAVE A MESS AGE at KÖNIG GALERIE. The title plays on the phrase “leave a message” while evoking a world that feels increasingly fragmented, accelerated, and uncertain. Throughout the exhibition, birds, parrots, and seashells appear as recurring protagonists. For Ruyant, birds embody rumors, conversations, and the constant transformation of meaning, while seashells become silent listeners—beautiful, seductive forms that hover between abstraction and bodily presence. Together, Johann König and Ruyant discuss rhythm, repetition, and improvisation in painting. Ruyant speaks about his Alka-Seltzer glass paintings as a visual diary, his shell paintings as exercises in color and surface, and his preference for allowing works to remain slightly open-ended. A painting is finished, he says, when it still leaves room for movement beyond its edges. The conversation also returns to Ruyant’s enduring fascination with comics, particularly the invisible space between two images where viewers complete the story themselves. It is a principle he carries into his exhibitions, where individual paintings function like fragments of a larger narrative. A conversation about painting as an open field between figuration and abstraction, humor and melancholy, image and imagination—and about why a painting can be much more than a representation: it can be an emotional object. More about the ARTIST [https://www.koeniggalerie.com/collections/hugo-ruyant] More about the EXHIBITION [https://www.koeniggalerie.com/blogs/exhibitions/hugo-ruyant-leave-a-mess-age] Follow Johann König on his social media channels: Instagram [https://www.instagram.com/johann.koenig/] Facebook [https://www.facebook.com/johannkoenigberlin/] LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/johann-k%C3%B6nig-39b895128/] X [https://x.com/johannkoenig] If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to contact us by email at: info@koeniggalerie.com [info@koeniggalerie.com] Photo © Hugo Ruyant