Galerie Eva Presenhuber is pleased to present its first one-man show by Tobias Pils.

Tobias Pils is exhibiting paintings on both canvas and paper. Central to the artist’s work is painting as process. The motif can be almost anything, subordinated to gesture, ductus, painting method, and painting process. This way of working allows for large-format works combining expressive elements with geometric structures. With his painting Pils creates a basis for associations with recalled images, which are heightened in the viewer by the reduced color palette. The reduction of color indicates a conceptual approach similar to monochrome or purely gestural painting. The picture creates mental images—it conveys stimuli that call up to memories, experiences, and fantasies, and initiate a dialogue with the viewer on a cognitive and emotional level.

“To contemplate these pictures is to undertake tracking expedition, collect clues, combine them into configurations, and lose sight of them again, suspecting objectivity and at the same time seeing through its fictional structure. Faced with these images one recognizes how easily one’s gaze can be misled, the degree to which it interprets signs and markings as representation, or to which seeing a figure is merely an attempt at orientation despite all the facts. Pils keeps this associative play unresolved, and raises it into our consciousness as subject matter.” 1

In this exhibition Pils presents 13 large-format and 5 small-format paintings on canvas, as well as a few works on paper. The works on paper are no studies or sketches to paintings but meant as independent works . The works on paper have been created in New York. Like diary entries they were painted by the artist one in a day, which is consistent with the processual and conceptual background in Pils painting practice.

Tobias Pils was born in Linz in 1971. He lives and works in Vienna.

1 from Rainer Fuchs: “Tobias Pils – Bilder als Interpretationsofferte” hidden