I last saw Kasper König on November 25, 2022, at Monica Bonvicini’s opening at the Neue Nationalgalerie. He mentioned his illness but was otherwise in such good spirits that I wasn’t especially concerned. So, on August 9th, the news of his passing came as a shock. Only then, faced with his absence, did the extent to which Kasper had shaped the premises of contemporary art fully hit me. This pertained not only to his long record of achievements but also to how he shaped fundamental assumptions about what art might be and, by extension, what an artist’s social role might also be. Moreover, these include the terms of my personal self-identification as an artist.

Kasper approached his life and work with a playful and often irreverent attitude. At restaurants, he ordered whatever he felt like eating – regardless of whether it appeared on the menu or not. Once, while staying at a resort hotel in Sardinia, Kasper found himself confronted with annoyingly exoticized figures of African men in the lobby. In response, he tucked copies of the FAZ under their arms every morning to give them a more cosmopolitan vibe.

While he was Director of Museum Ludwig in Cologne, he proudly gave me a tour – all the while pointedly ignoring its “no smoking” signs. I asked about some of the challenges of running a museum.

“Men masturbating in front of paintings! It happens more often than you think.”

“In front of which paintings?”

“Mostly Max Ernst’s The Virgin Spanking Christ...”

Among other things, Kasper was obsessed with postcards. More to the point, he was obsessed with making collages on postcards that he would mail to friends and colleagues. It was a longstanding practice. When she and Kasper were a couple, Barbara Weiss complained that he was often at it before she could get out of bed in the morning. Kasper’s obsession even inspired his friend On Kawara to produce postcard works of his own. [1] Kasper’s postcards were artworks too. And gifts. And, often, commentaries. All conceived for individual recipients. As such, they forged and commemorated interpersonal bonds with a modicum of reserve and – often – absurdity. With these, Kasper quietly transgressed the conventional expectations of what a curator should be doing.

Some examples:

A monkey in traditional Bavarian garb, including lederhosen, brandishing a beer stein, taped to a bright-yellow background.

Two 2017 “Skulptur Projekte Münster” graphics juxtaposed against a reclining Muppet.

A young girl undergoing an eye exam by ophthalmologist. Underneath, in German, a quote from James Baldwin: “Sicher ist auf jeden Fall, dass Ignoranz, gepaart mit Macht, der grausamste Feind ist, den Gerechtigkeit haben kann.” (“It is certain, in any case, that ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have.”)

Irregular white rectangles pasted over a large pink block.

Stills from Andrea Fraser’s 1991 performance May I Help You? at American Fine Arts, featuring Allan McCollum’s Surrogates. Kasper glued these images over a black-and-white image of another unidentifiable installation.

A medieval (?) crucifix complete with a Christ figure. Overhead, the legend “Kopf hoch” (keep your head up).

Hieronymus Bosch’s Visioni dell'Aldilá in which Kasper obscured most of the vision with White-Out correction fluid, leaving only four supplicants (human and angelic) facing a grey tunnel.

A Marcel Broodthaers graphic that featured a cloud and sign against a stylized brick wall. Kasper stuck a sticker with his return address over the sign.

A menagerie of old-timey Easter Rabbit stickers plus a chick and a lamb. Many rabbits are anthropomorphized.

Five orange beach chairs, arranged in a semi-circle on a backyard lawn. Evidently, a John Knight project in Munich.

A white stretch SUV parked between a row of stores and a streetcar track in Oslo.

A man (probably Kasper) photographed from the back, wearing a hat and pants with suspenders. He’s seen through a doorway, exiting an office either packed up or unpacked. The bookshelves are empty. Open cardboard boxes appear in the foreground. The floor-to-ceiling bookshelves are empty, save one small, unidentifiable object. A small table and chair stand before the bookcase. On the table, a lamp, a glass, a bottle of mineral water, an open magazine, and some crumpled paper. Underneath the table, a waste basket filled with discarded papers.

Kasper wrote the recipient’s address and the postcard’s ostensible message in a barely legible scrawl. I sometimes wonder how many were successfully delivered. But efficiency was not the point. For that reason, Kasper disdained email. Perhaps he was right.

Almost all the postcards featured a sticker that read: “Absender: Büro Kasper König, Kurfürstenstraße 13, 10785 Berlin.” Over this, he drew a large “X.” Which confused me. Had he moved his office after he made the postcard? Otherwise, why use a sticker only to cross it out? Just a few days ago, Daniel Herleth provided a plausible explanation: It was indeed his return address, but Kasper crossed it out so the letter carrier wouldn’t think that’s where it was supposed to go.