Art Comes from Artificiality
A Conversation with Tim
Eitel
Urbane Coolness or an
air-conditioned nightmare? In Tim Eitel’s paintings, modernist big-city
architecture, park landscapes, and broad skies collide as sharply
delineated fields of color. His paintings are populated by individual
figures or groups in which each is left to his or her own devices. Yet a
dark shadow seems to have descended upon this brave new world. Sebastian
Preuss spoke with Tim Eitel, one of the most successful artists of the
New Leipzig School, about parallel worlds, nature as a recreational park,
and his fascination for bodily poses.
Tim
Eitel, Krater, 2004,
Photo Uwe
Walter, Berlin,
Courtesy Galerie
EIGEN + Art, Leipzig/Berlin
© VG
Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2006
The people in Tim
Eitel’s paintings always seem isolated, immersed in themselves,
interior, often in opposition to their surroundings. They move through
oddly sterile worlds as though in an invisible bubble. While the buildings
quote real museums, pictorial grids à la Mondrian
merge with interiors in surreal manner; landscapes of abstracted nature
seem frozen into cool fields of color.
Tim
Eitel, o. T. (Gepäck), 2005,
Photo
Uwe Walter, Berlin,
Courtesy
Galerie EIGEN + Art, Leipzig/Berlin
©
VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2006
As of late, however,
even these seem to have disappeared, leaving the figures lost in endless
monochrome tones or a deep, rich black. Eitel speaks of parallel worlds.
He is a master of hidden allusion, even if one should never take this all
too literally. His paintings are filled with diffuse moods whose character
remains ambiguous. But the proximity to late 19th century Symbolism
is a freely elected affinity. Eitel dreams the old dream of Romanticism,
but he does it entirely without nostalgia or sentiment. On the contrary,
he arms himself with elements from modern design and architecture as well
as the contemporary attitudes and poses of his figures. Splendid
Isolation – this epithet fits to none of the young painter stars better
than the 34 year-old artist, who studied in Leipzig together with Neo
Rauch, Matthias
Weischer, and David
Schnell; for the past three years he has been meeting with
enthusiastic response among collectors worldwide. His works have long been
part of the Deutsche Bank Collection.
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Sebastian Preuss: Why do
the figures in your paintings always seem so isolated, even when they’re
in groups?
Tim Eitel: I consider it to be a kind of
controlled experiment. When I remove the figures from their original
context, then I concentrate on their appearance alone, their pose and
their body language. But this kind of isolation varies from work to work.
In the earlier paintings, the museum paintings, the people depicted are
immersed in contemplation. With the landscapes, it’s more about the
relationship of the city dweller to nature, which has become demoted to a
kind of nearby recreational space, a culturally defined area. It’s about
the conflict, the interaction between individual figures and the
landscape. But you shouldn’t confuse the figures’ isolation with
loneliness. Instead, it’s a solitariness – a solitariness as a possibility
to concentrate. In moments like these, you draw closer to your own
identity.
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Tim Eitel, Leerer Raum, 2004,
Photo
Uwe Walter, Berlin,
Courtesy
Galerie EIGEN + ART, Leipzig/Berlin, © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2006
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Tim Eitel, o. T. (Graue Wände), 2005,
Photo
Uwe Walter, Berlin,
Courtesy
Galerie EIGEN + ART, Leipzig/Berlin, © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2006
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You once stressed how important the reference to the
world of recognizable things is to your work, and that you couldn’t
imagine painting abstract. But this reference is broken by the stark
isolation of your figures. Your paintings are ethereal, often magical, and
always artificial.
That happens
automatically. Painting is always artificial and staged; there’s no such
thing as a straight realism. I translate reality for myself and extract a
kind of parallel world from the flood of imagery bombarding us every day.
When you see a somewhat embarrassed looking figure standing at a counter,
to name one example, then it’s a typical image that has something to say
about our time. In the end, this whole flood of images today means
nothing. You have to filter the essence out of it, find signs that are
more universal. But I’m not trying to make a literary or theoretical
statement; I’m trying to unleash associations in the viewer.
Tim
Eitel, Wagen, 2005,
Photo Uwe
Walter, Berlin,
Courtesy Galerie
EIGEN + ART, Leipzig/Berlin
© VG
Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2006
Do you always have
an image in mind when you start painting?
These
arise gradually. Take the construction wagon in one of my new paintings,
for instance. When I saw it, it interested me immediately; I knew it was
right up my alley, and I photographed it. I take a lot of photographs, of
course, that I never use. The impressions and associations merge and I
start painting, and then more and more images crop up.
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