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.
Read MoreEitel 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.
