Emily Weiner. Lunacy

KÖNIG GALERIE is pleased to present LUNACY, an exhibition by Emily Weiner in the Nave of St. Agnes, the artist’s third show with the gallery. About The title of the exhibition, LUNACY, poetically alludes to the moon as a symbol of cyclical change and eternal recurrence. At the same time, the term can also suggest a lack of balance and universal perspective in contemporary politics—although political themes are not explicitly the subject of the paintings. Instead, Emily Weiner’s works reflect on art history, archetypal symbolism, Buddhist notions of interdependence, and insights from modern physics. Many of the works explore how humans construct meaning from a complex and often incomprehensible world. The painting REBUS (DO NOT DESPAIR), for example, employs the structure of a visual puzzle in which individual motifs are phonetically combined to form a message: “do not despair.” This combination of wordplay and image points to the human tendency to perceive meaning in random patterns and to shape coherent narratives from fragments—a concept reminiscent of Carl Jung’s idea of archetypal symbolic structures. Other works address perception as relational. In NEBULA, a landscape emerges from overlapping shapes that recall the well-known vase-face illusion. The shifting forms suggest that the present always arises from prior conditions—biological, cultural, or cosmic. The title alludes to nebulae in astronomy, linking human existence to the processes of star and matter formation. Several works adopt a cosmic perspective to situate human experience within a larger context. HOW HIGH (ICARUS) connects the ancient myth of Icarus with images from the James Webb Space Telescope, raising questions about limits and ambition. Rather than depicting a fall, the work opens an alternative path: not upward, but “through” limitations. A similar idea appears in ALIGNMENT, whose endless architectural arches evoke the iconic Emerald City from The Wizard of Oz and symbolize an inward journey—the realization that the authority or truth sought ultimately resides within. The infinite corridor serves as a metaphor for the inner journey, where truth is found not in an external goal but inside oneself. PASSING THROUGH presents existence as a series of thresholds—between life and death, memory and forgetfulness, birth and farewell. These transitions are not fixed endpoints but permeable states. Inspired by the Zen teacher Thich Nhat Hanh’s saying, “The way out is in,” the work suggests that transcendence arises more from inner insight than from escape. Other works in the exhibition link art-historical and philosophical references with scientific concepts. CONTINUUM, for example, reflects on the invisible structures that shape the elements we perceive. Space and time are manifestations of the elastic gravitational field in which the events of our lives unfold. This field, imperceptible to human senses but measurable through technology, resembles the surface of an ocean rippling in response to the bodies within it. The spiral form illustrates how massive objects curve spacetime and set surrounding matter and light into continuous motion—much like planets shaping spacetime or galaxies rotating around invisible centers of gravity. In COHERENT SOURCES, vanitas symbolism, references to Gerhard Richter’s painting, and the famous double-slit experiment from quantum physics intersect, echoed in the structure of the painting’s support. Here it becomes clear that both meaning in art and reality in physics arise relationally: through observation, context, and interaction. Several works stage the world as a theatrical space where cosmic perspectives emerge. In EQUANIMITY, curtains are drawn aside to reveal Earth as a tiny “Pale Blue Dot”—a nod to the famous Voyager 1 image and Carl Sagan’s reflections on the fragility of human civilization. In ORACLE and MUNDUS INVERSUS, curtains again serve as theatrical thresholds between the visible world and hidden orders. The universe is presented as a space of mutual relationships in which light, forces, and meaning emerge through interaction. Other works explore resonance, fracture, and the creation of meaning. HOW THE LIGHT GETS IN takes its title from a line in Leonard Cohen’s song Anthem: “There is a crack in everything… that’s how the light gets in,” suggesting that enlightenment arises through rupture. The shaped panel references the curved form of a cello, making the painting both image and object. Its surface transitions from a deep twilight blue to the glowing orange-pink of a hazy city sunset. At its center, two F-holes interrupt the sky like openings—musical, physical, and cosmic—revealing a starry night beyond the sunset. These openings signify both resonance and fracture: points where invisible depth becomes visible. Light is depicted not as something simply falling upon the world, but as entering through cracks, thresholds, and moments of vulnerability. Finally, works such as RECURSIVITY and SOURCE investigate the fundamental ordering principles of nature. Spirals, geometric structures, and recurring patterns visualize mathematical and physical processes such as the Fibonacci sequence or gravitational centers. These images reveal that seemingly infinite structures emerge from simple, repeating relationships. Together, the paintings form a network of connections between art, science, mythology, and personal experience. They suggest that reality—like meaning—is not composed of fixed truths but arises from relationships, resonances, and ongoing processes of interpretation. Read more Toggle Painting