TOBIAS PILS
2017-05-15The exhibition will be comprised of new paintings. Pils complex compositions present a field that is neither entirely legible nor abstract, but rather exists (and evolves) between these seemingly disparate states of representation. The result are compositions that continually agitate and shift between surreal-like, anthropomorphic forms and more hard-edge abstractions, challenging the notion of a stable image or perception.
“His compositions of marks have no representational intent to guide them yet often result in suggestive figuration. He likens a section of one of his recent paintings to the fronds of “palms”, while another, which displays a similar sequence of feather-like branching, contains a section that becomes to his eye an “arrow”. An entirely natural, virtually absent-minded stroke of the brush, a gentle curving motion that seems hard-wired into the functioning of the human hand-leads to such figurative resemblance. The representational associations that appear to Pils arrive after the fact, or perhaps even during the process of painting, but without guiding the outcome. Depending on how the curves cluster or branch, they may suggest feathers, leaves on a stalk, or hair. Or nothing.”
Opposite – Untitled (city), 2016
Exhibition runs through to June 17th, 2017
Galerie Eva Presenhuber
39 Great Jones Street
10012 New York
