Tobias Pils evocative 'abstract' artworks are often dense with overlapping organic and industrial forms that allude to peopled narratives in the real world, but which also seem to be a section of cut-out fabric because of their rich abundance of imagery that is like that of a tapestry. See for example, coins (2018), couple (2019), Love (2019), and The Communication (2019). Other works are more austere with open, more minimal, landscape vistas, such as The discussion (2021) and Birdman (2018).
Read MoreIn his fable-like paintings Pils mixes thick piled-on impasto with gestural swathes of delicate washes and very understated colour, while his ink drawings tend to be much sparer and more spontaneous, serving as meditations on earlier completed paintings. His pencil drawings on the other hand are very different in purpose, serving as aids in working out problems in composition before painting is started.
Pils' imagery is rich in its apparent art-historical allusions to other artists such as Pablo Picasso, A.R. Penck, and Carroll Dunham, sometimes formally reliant on harsh and strident rectangular block shapes, other times full of softer and rotund, flowing arabesques. Geometric forms often structure the positioning of Pils' figurative elements, with body parts being regularly separated, to hover in isolation and take on a symbolism.
Pils believes that when working on a canvas, at a certain point it lets the artist know when it is complete, and why it is created. These aspects reveal themselves, and it is time to stop.
