Galerie Eva Presenhuber is pleased to present Happy Days, the gallery’s seventh solo exhibition by the Austrian artist Tobias Pils.
Happy Days
This exhibition consists of 2 Triptychs (Happy Days, A Projection), a family of eight paintings and one bronze.
It might be the most intimate thus far.
Being a body.
Being part of a bigger body. A group, maybe.
Vis a Vis.
Shared consciousness whilst being together. Whilst being apart.
Togetherness and Loneliness.
Being held and holding each other.
Being reflected and mirrored in the opposite.
If there is a distance (and there is a lot of it), it’s a distance from proximity.
I am Us.
It is about fragility, tenderness and vulnerability.
Some of these figures have faces without eyes, no mouth, no nose, etc.
A nobody who is somebody.
A blank surface for the viewer. For projection.
A possibility to get rid of my own persona.
A possibility for the painter to get rid of my own persona.
The painting is just a painting.
The painting process (act of painting) is the ultimate transformation- the moment of the unpredictable.
Painting is time and dissolves the concept of time at once.
I must live through a whole life with a painting so that it can be born.
A found egg.
Tobias Pils, April 2024
Tobias Pils was born 1971 in Linz, AT, and lives and works in Vienna, AT. In 2023, Pils curated the exhibition Antoinette Zwirchmayr: In the stranglehold of ivy at Galerie Eva Presenhuber in Vienna, AT, and together with Joe Bradley, The Wing-Paysage at Le Consortium Dijon, FR. In 2020, Pils’ fresco, Alpha, Omega & Infinity, was unveiled in the Renzo Piano-designed École Normale Supérieure (ENS) Paris-Saclay, Gif-sur-Yvette, FR. Recent solo exhibitions in museums include Kunstmuseum Bonn, Bonn, DE (permanent installation) (2020); Josef Albers Museum, Bottrop, DE (2018); Kunsthalle Krems, Krems an der Donau, AT (2017); Le Consortium, Dijon, FR (together with Michael Williams) (2017); Chinati Foundation, John Chamberlain Building, Marfa, TX, US (2016); and WienerSecession, Vienna, AT (2013). Recent group exhibitions include Museo Picasso in Málaga, ES (2023); Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien, Vienna, AT (2021–2022); Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich, DE (2020–2021); Musée Picasso, Paris, FR (2020); Spritmuseum, Stockholm, SE (2019); Le Consortium Collection, Le Consortium, Dijon, FR (2018); Aspen Art Museum, Aspen, CO, US (2018); 21er Haus, Vienna, AT (2017); and Art Basel Unlimited, Basel, CH (2016).
