Artist: Tobias Pils

Galerie Eva Presenhuber presents new pencil and ink drawings by Austrian painter Tobias Pils in his exhibition Blende zum Morgen / Fade to Morning. The show is dedicated to drawing as a filter, as a beginning and an end, as an origin and a prism, through which Pils’ entire artistic practice is reflected and unfolds into the future. It is the artist’s eighth solo exhibition at the gallery, running in parallel with his solo exhibition at mumok in Vienna.

My drawing habits have changed quite a bit within the last few years. From a daily routine into a „from time to time practice“. Preferring to draw in places other than my studio- like home (when our children have gone to bed), using my gallery’s storage room for a couple of hours or on vacations.

My ink drawings are meditations on something (mostly paintings) already achieved. Rather emotional.
The much smaller pencil drawings are drafts, architectures and notes for something coming. Rather distant.

Finding the right mood, the right speed, the right measurement.
Trains of thoughts are passing by. The level of desire is high.
Lines are becoming veins, connecting me to something bygone.
What means now?
Are we everything that we are missing?
Are we everything that we are lacking?

From: Tobias Pils, Drawings, 2024. p. 162.

It is as if one suddenly can see the inaccessible behind layers. That, which remains hidden in the usual chaos of everyday life. Tobias Pils’ images are timeless, but anti-classical, because they lead beyond the reality of ideals and idealizations.

The restraint or even abstinence in the use of color can be taken as a first serious sign—but of what? Is the answer: moving away from the excess of spectacle, abundance, thunderous noise? Toward nuance? Toward the anatomy of life, how it flows and pulsates within, toward the source where the elemental begins?

The activity of drawing is vividly linked to that of painting. With the intimacy attributed to drawing and the immediacy that connects the act of creating with mental work, with the center of thought and feeling, viewers believe they have insight into the exposure of the most intimate reflection of emotions—and of the personal and subjective? But Tobias Pils shows us supra-individual glyphs, distilled from the depths of the collective.

Viewing his pictures is a two-stage process: when you stand in front of them, it is not the directness of the content that strikes you, but that of the material, the vehicle. This is because the intimacy and immediacy of the drawing has been magnified to immense proportions. Only then does the work of seeing and deciphering the moving and populated pictorial events begin. Reading the intertwining motifs, the hints and the clear meanings. Seeing is empathizing and recognizing, as well as sensing possible experiences that connect one’s own with the other to form a synthesis.

It is a veritable training in possibilities—this immersion in a seemingly real dream world that affects us all. Forget surrealism with its redundant reference to the individual unconscious. Tobias Pils’ images leave psychologizing behind, looking at the grotesque behavior of humanity as a whole, with all its ancestors and eternal repetitions [...]

From: Bice Curiger, Die Augen reiben, 2025

Tobias Pils was born in Linz, Austria, in 1971 and lives and works in Vienna, Austria. Recent solo exhibitions in museums include: Museum of Modern Art Ludwig Foundation Vienna (mumok), Vienna, AT (2025); École Normale Supérieure (ENS) Paris-Saclay, Gif-sur-Yvette, FR (fresco) (2020); Kunstmuseum Bonn, Bonn, DE (permanent installation), (2020); the 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 the Vienna Secession, Vienna, AT (2013). Recent group exhibitions include: Museo Picasso, Málaga, ES (2023); Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig, 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).