Großer Janus

The beginning and the end

Since Koenig's time as a scholarship holder at the renowned Villa Massimo in Rome, motifs from ancient mythology have accompanied the artist's work. The sculpture presents itself in Koenig's typical formal language based on stereometric elements. As a Roman deity without a Greek equivalent, the two-headed, sometimes four-headed Janus was regarded as a symbol of the duality of all things. He thus fits in with the themes and meanings whose sculptural formulation always aroused Koenig's interest: the life and death of human and animal creatures, love and suffering or the ambivalence of reason and emotion anchored in every human being.
(Excerpt text Stephanie Gilles, Bavarikon)