Tobias Pils

Name: Untitled
Start: 2019-07-22T00:00:00+02:00
End: 2019-08-03T23:59:59+02:00
Location: Hohensalzburg Fortress

Untitled

22 July–3 August 2019

Hohensalzburg Fortress

Untitled (Room), 2016, mixed media on canvas, 395 x 3187.5 cm, courtesy of the artist and Galerie Gisela Capitain, photo: Jorit Aust

Sold out!

Media
Painting and drawing

Location
Hohensalzburg Fortress

Teaching language
English (teacher also speaks German)

What to bring
Material from your own archive, tools, brushes, pencils, watercolours, paper, canvases, etc.

Requirements
A serious study of your own medium, but readiness to explore the unknown

Maximum number of participants
20

Co-teacher
Michael Horsky

Participation fee
€ 700.– (€ 540.–)

This course has neither a prescribed theme nor an umbrella concept. The focus is on the individual self: starting here, with one foot set firmly in the past, with the other foot you should tread new territory – intuitively, following inspiration, without needing to rely on concepts such as “abstraction” or “figuration”. What interests me is art without words. The aim is to develop a personal language irreplaceable by any other.

Starting with the determination of a status quo and a conversation on aspiration and potential fields of development, students are encouraged to withdraw into themselves to work, to reflect and to exchange ideas. The aim is to familiarise yourself with your own work and working method so far as to enable gradual distancing and further development. The expansion of the terrain depends on the knowledge of what already exists.

All classic painting and drawing techniques are welcome. The prerequisite is process-oriented open-mindedness towards calling in question your own working method. This process will be initiated in one-to-one conversations and implemented in the work.

Tobias Pils, born in Linz (AT) in 1971, lives and works in Vienna. His pictures are paradoxes. Each work is at once process and product, gain and loss, impenetrable and transparent, planned and fortuitous. We see lines, grids, all manner of textures, combined with mechanical and organic forms. Objects are hinted at, but any clear interpretation is thwarted. What remain are only components and fragments which evoke for the viewer arbitrary metaphorical associations. Just as the interpretation goes its own way – depending on the viewer’s intuitive notions – Pils’s painting process is also an exploration of intuition. He dispenses with colours, heightening his concentration by working exclusively with shades of grey.

Solo exhibitions
2021 David Kordansky Gallery, Los Angeles, CA (US). Capitain Petzel, Berlin. 2020 Galerie Eva Presenhuber, New York, NY (US). Permanent installation, Bonner Raum, Kunstmuseum Bonn, Bonn (DE). Galerie Eva Presenhuber, Zurich (CH). 2019 Primordial Flow, Galerie Gisela Capitain, Cologne (DE). 2018 Antiparos, Galerie Eva Presenhuber, Kastro (GR). Josef Albers Museum Bottrop, (with Bernhard Fuchs, Justin Matherly), Bottrop (DE). 2017 Galerie Eva Presenhuber, New York, NY. Untitled (Room) & Marfa Paintings, Josef Albers Museum Bottrop, Bottrop. Untitled, Kunsthalle Krems, Krems (AT). Le Consortium, Dijon (FR). 2016 Loge Nr 1, Galerie Gisela Capitain, Cologne (DE). Chinati Foundation, John Chamberlain Building, Marfa, TX (US). Capitain Petzel, Berlin. 2015 Galerie Eva Presenhuber, Zurich (CH). Galerie Gisela Capitain, Cologne. 2013 Secession, Vienna Secession, Vienna.

Group exhibitions
2019 Monopol, Spritmuseum, Stockholm. 2018 Le Consortium Collection, Le Consortium, Dijon. Jay DeFeo – The Ripple Effect, Aspen Art Museum, Aspen, CO (US). Smooth Transitions, Galerie Eva Presenhuber, Zurich. Jay DeFeo – The Ripple Effect, Le Consortium, Dijon. Group Show, Galerie Eva Presenhuber, Zurich. 2017 Spiegelnde Fenster, 21er Haus, Vienna.

Publications
Tobias Pils: Antiparos, DoPe Press, L.A./Paris 2018. Florian Steininger (Kunsthalle Krems) (ed.): Tobias Pils: Doves, Verlag für moderne Kunst, Vienna 2017. Josef Albers Museum Bottrop (ed.): Tobias Pils. Untitled [Room] & MARFA Paintings, exh. cat., Koenig Books, London 2017.

www.tobiaspils.com
www.presenhuber.com
www.galeriecapitain.de
www.capitainpetzel.de

Portrait photo: Elfie Semotan