Drawing from his observations and experiences of the contemporary world, Tim Eitel creates figurative paintings and lithographs that capture both fictive and actual moments from daily life.
Read MoreEitel initially studied philosophy, literature, and German studies at the University of Stuttgart, before studying painting at Burg Giebichenstein University of Art and Design in Halle.
In 1997, he enrolled at the Academy of Fine Arts Leipzig, becoming associated with the New Leipzig School: a loosely affiliated group of artists, including David Schnell, Julia Schmidt, and Matthias Weischer, who attended the Leipzig Academy in the 1990s and share common interests in technical skill and figuration. Eitel completed his Master's degree under Professor Arno Rink, a second-generation artist of the Leipzig School, between 2001 and 2003.
A sense of quietude or melancholy characterises Tim Eitel's paintings, which feature often solitary or small groups of figures who occupy abstracted expanses of colour.
Eitel explores the possibility of colour as form, placing human figures in ambiguous settings structured by generally monochromatic blocks of colour. These can range from the striking blue of Schwarzer Sand (2004) to the muted grey of Mexican window (2014), which evokes a cloudy or rainy day.
Juxtaposition of depth and flatness confound the viewer's sense of place in Mantel (2002), in which the detailed portrayal of the human figure's yellow coat contrasts with the uninterrupted surfaces of black and pale green that make up the environment. The two young women in Conversation (2018) are also rendered with attention to depth, as is the grey wall they sit upon, while the background is vertically divided into blocks of white and blue—which could be an extreme abstraction of a building and the sky.
Many of Eitel's subjects appear by themselves with their backs to the viewer, studying a Mondrian-like grid in Rot und Blau (2002) or disappearing behind the corner in Hinter Felsen (2016). Even when in a group, such as the young girls in uniform in White Skirts (2012), the figures inhabit a space of monochromatic, flat colour that seems isolated from the rest of the world around them.
In more recent works, however, such as those included in Eitel's 2021 solo exhibition Vie imaginaire, chapitre II: Ensemble at Berlin's Galerie Eigen + Art, figures engage more closely. The narrow canvas of La Séance (2021), for example, offers a limited view to an interior, in which an ambiguous scene takes place between three figures on a bed.
Tim Eitel exhibits internationally in solo exhibitions and group exhibitions.
Solo exhibitions include Vie imaginaire, chapitre II: Ensemble, Galerie Eigen + Art, Berlin (2021); Untitled (Interior), Pace Gallery, Seoul (2020); tim eitel_untitled (2001–2020), The Daegu Museum, South Korea (2020); Tim Eitel: Open Walls, Museum der bildenden Künste Leipzig (2019); Tim Eitel: Yellow Sky, Goethe Institut, Hong Kong (2017); Tim Eitel: Apparition of a Distance, However Near, Hakgojae Gallery, Seoul (2017); Tim Eitel, Essl Museum-Contemporary Art, Klosterneuburg, Austria (2013).
Select group exhibitions include Stand 1D08, Galerie Eigen + Art, Berlin (2020); Chewing Gum III, Pace Gallery, Hong Kong (2019); Artistry and Methods – Drawing as Art / Art as Drawing, Museum of China Academy of Art, Hangzhou (2017); De Zee – salut d'honneur Jan Hoet, Mu.Zee, Ostend, Belgium (2014); Facing Nature, Museum Belvedere, Heerenveen, Netherlands (2013).
Sherry Paik | Ocula | 2021
![Contemporary art exhibition, Tim Eitel, Untitled (Interior) at Seoul, [Location closed] Seoul, South Korea](https://files.ocula.com/anzax/59/596fbf07-530f-4d70-8c27-d0d9af957c67_720_400.jpg)
