I consider König a peer, of sorts, from our Bar 3 days.

I mean, I was a thirty-something foreigner starting up a career and a business in Berlin with 35euro memberships, and he was a same-aged, you know, yada yada rich bitch. I find his later development baffling and ultimately disappointing ( and I am talking about pre sexual misconduct allegations).

I remember him often arriving at some shitty opening late at night with a clunky bike, his girlfriend at the back, laughing like kids. ( I mean, he was not a kid, he was married with kids, I think). But I found it romantic. Of course, there were plenty of clunky bikes at these type of openings, including my own; none impressed me much, though, and none stayed in my mind in a particularly rosy light. How we love a good, enfant terrible story; the young, rebellious, unorthodox, sometimes offensive "genius" success story! If we take whiteness and class elements out, this is often a description of someone who ends up in jail or dead. Sometimes offensive, of course, does a lot of heavy lifting in the collective socioeconomic wet dreams of the rich Wunderkind.

How much abuse of power can we gloss over? Grabbing? Sure. Groping? Potato Potatoe, get in there. Holding against will? You got it. Ridiculously suggestive verbal advances? Bring it on. Shoving tongue in a stranger's mouth? Could happen. Laugh it off. Pushing someone against their will in a bathroom stall? Yeah, that seems pretty crime-y, but what do I know? Allegedly!

I remember König grabbing my hand one night on Hydra island, the night the whole art world descended on the tiny Greek island to wait for Mathews Barney's "genius" unveiling that dawn, only for half of them to pass out drunk. The usual tango. Surprised, Flattered, Afraid. I laughed it off, he insisted, I brushed it off, he insisted, I walked away, he came after me, he somehow "took a no" for an answer, the fifth time. All in good, late-night drunken faith, ha? But why do we need to put up with even that much? And this experience is definitely not the biggest dildo on my Metoo shelf.

(You guys, if I get sued for this, you will have to crowdfund for me).

I don't know; for me, non-consensually touching (let alone grabbing) body parts has always seemed out of limits; however much cocaine you have had. Men just don't seem to grasp that concept, do they? It has been five years, and Metoo has reached even the darkest, dustiest corner of art world patriarchy, the Athens School of Fine Arts* (and promptly squashed, of course), yet men's greatest concession to the liberation work so far has been the use of emojis. 

*ASFA is a proud employer of not one, not ten, but an ALL MALE professor's Painting Department. It must be some kind of time capsule experiment they are doing down there, back to the Future Fifties.

König, as any self-made wealthy man, knows to appropriate a successful public movement and has previously spoken about the importance of #MeToo in the art world, which seems as open to fact-checking as David Kordansky claiming he is a BLM advocate. In 2018, Die Zeit reported, in a profile of König, "The movement has sharpened his consciousness" (???). "Men, as he puts it now, have to act much more consciously in gender relations than they might have done in the past." There was not even the slightest context Die Zeit editors felt tempted to offer here?! The irony of Die Zeit Johan König of the current take-down article linking to past Die Zeit Johan König build-up articles ( I counted at least 3 or 4) does not escape me. I do not want to minimize the courage and efforts it must have taken for the authors to publish even that much, that late. Just pointing out the obvious. Dismantle the system, not the man.

König did issue a response to the current allegations, which can be summarised as: I didn't do the thing, if I did do it it is because I am blind, apologies to whoever I am absolutely not at fault for hurting, also, I will sue you all. 

"I can imagine that my dissolute and impulsive way of partying, dancing, and talking, the combination of party or nightclub atmosphere, crowded rooms, alcohol, darkness, my poor vision (since an accident in my childhood, my right eye is blind, and I see only 20-30% in my left eye), may have led to women or even men feeling harassed by me, or my actions even perceived as assaultive."

You know what, we have heard all this so many times already. The righteous indignation, the non-apology. Blaming blindness for the wandering hands is a first, but yawn. Where is the rebellion, dude? Where is the innovation? Where is the art? Where did all that supposed talent and potential go? Certainly not into whatever it is you have been doing the last years or that Alicja Kwade "Z" NFT debacle. I am bored. 

Disclaimer: König gallery was also a member of Bpigs for a few years, mostly to piss off Kirsa, and I was here for that.

Links: Die Zeit article 

Artnet ( same article in English) 
Artnet with König's response