Johann König

Successful people always say the same thing: you mustn’t have any fear of failure and you have to stand up always.

When I think about it that also applies to me as a gallerist, because in the beginning of my career the backstrokes were often so massive that they became critical. It was particularly hard for me — because after an accident when I was a child I was mostly blind — but that brought me stamina and a certain kind of determination. I came into some thousands of Euros and I borrowed the same amount of money from my uncle to start up in Berlin until the funds ran out after a couple of failed exhibitions. I imagined it to be much easier and now that the money was gone and I was deep in dept to landlords, art fairs and employees — no artists though, as there were no sales! I almost had given up and scraped together my last money and energy for a final exhibition.

I wasn’t afraid of failing commercial sense. I feared not being taken seriously. Unfortunately, my exhibitions were just not radical enough. I never took the full risk and agreed to compromises. But when there was nothing left to lose the turning point came. Jeppe Hein came up with the idea to build an iron sphere that moves across the gallery space and destroys walls and rooms — basically impossible to sell and completely silly. It was at this point though, when I wasn’t afraid anymore and ready to go down in glory that I made the turnaround. The iron sphere was a moneymaker. Now things could go on.

Also the most important thing happened: I learned that it was wrong to think of what might work or not and I realized that I had to do what appeared to be the right thing to me. Anyone frightened of failure won’t make the right decisions. Jeppe Hein is the best example — for him the risk of failure never is reason enough not to try. It was always Jeppe’s dream to open a bar and that’s what he did a few years ago in Copenhagen. The artist duo Elmgreen & Dragset (to whom Iʼll talk in the Failure issue of Whitelies Magazine) came up with its name: KARRIERE. But that wasn’t a prediction: the bar failed miserably and went bankrupt. Jeppe failed on one level but fulfilled his lifetime dream. So he also won.


Words by Johann König
Photograph by Lukas Gansterer