Josef ZekoffParadise

The facelessness of the protagonists in Josef Zekoff’s pictures is one of their most striking features. Whether they are sign-like labyrinths – he also paints ornaments and maps – or drawn stick figures, the interstice these pictures occupy calls for self-reflection, for which the viewer must, however, muster courage. Or, as Florian Waldvogel writes in his introductory text: “Are the protagonists of his pictures seeking an encounter with something that goes beyond the world of objects and fixed quantities? Is it a matter, as Martin Heidegger writes in ‘Was ist Metaphysik?’, of an encounter with the ‘nothing’ in ‘anxiety’? Does the confrontation with the ‘nothing’ in Zekoff’s pictures point to our anxiety in the face of the original meaninglessness of the world, to the fact that it is Dasein which ascribes meanings to things?” According to Heidegger, the worldliness of the world lies in this emptiness, and Zekoff’s figures, unlike the viewers, feel no anxiety in the face of the nothing. Yet as in Jacobin tragedy, fear needs the consciousness of loss in order to be able to survive. According to Marcel Proust, Florian Waldvogel concludes, the true paradises are those that have been lost.

Exhibition:
Contemporary Fine Arts CFA Berlin, 1/7 – 5/8/2023