An April 1, 2022, Eva Presenhuber will open another gallery after Zurich and New York: in Vienna. An April fool? No. A happy return. Because Presenhuber was born in Austria.
In the 1980s she studied with Ernst Caramelle at the University of Applied Arts, but did not see herself as an artist. In 1989 she took over the non-profit space Walcheturm in Zurich and started her career as a gallery owner. But: “Vienna is an affair of the heart,” she says.
Compared to their other locations, the rents in Vienna are a “Lercherl”, as they say in the Austrian capital – even if Presenhuber does not want to give any numbers. She rented a place at Lichtenfelsgasse 5, in the best inner-city location.
Formerly a police station, then a shop for yacht needs, the 220 square meter, ground-level rooms stood empty for several decades. Built in the late 19th century in the historicist style, the arcade house with the high shop windows promises an exciting contrast to the first exhibition with one of the gallery’s regular artists: Tobias Pils.
Start with the painter Tobias Pils
He is also no stranger to Vienna. At the end of 2013, the Austrian painter, born in 1971, had a large solo exhibition at the Secession. His breakthrough came during his scholarship stay in New York in 2014. In the same year he came to Presenhuber. The Vienna Museum of Modern Art last showed it in the collection exhibition “Enjoy”.
How does Pils explain its success? Art often looks almost identical internationally. His pictures are very different, he says during a conversation in his studio in Vienna. In fact, there is nothing that compares to his painting.
Pils’ mixture of abstract and figurative pictorial elements makes any categorization difficult. As a painter, he is a master of shades of gray – also in terms of color. For the gallery premiere in Vienna he opted for a radical concept.
View of the exhibition “Between Us Space” with paintings by Tobias Pils and murals by Gerwald Rockenschaub
Source: © Tobias Pils © Gerwald Rockenschaub/Photo/Jorit Aust
He invited Gerwald Rockenschaub to collaborate: “We’ve known each other since I was four years old, we come from the same village in Upper Austria.” Rockenschaub, one of Austria’s most well-known contemporary artists, created a play of colors for the walls: pink, bright green , yolk yellow, red.
Applied here to fill the entire wall, there as small set pieces, once with a brutal dichotomy. It couldn’t go wrong, Pils was sure in advance – and was right. A peaceful coexistence arises in space between the very different artistic positions without any claim to union.
Tobias Pils paints horses and eye creatures
Does the exhibition title “Between Us Space” refer to this? Also, but especially on the pictures, says Pils. With the title of the exhibition, he is addressing the space between the picture elements: “I only paint one picture at a time, which I then consider as life in all its facets. It doesn’t have to make sense as a whole.” Horses keep appearing in the new series of pictures, as do apples, or are they bubbles? In some pictures you can see “eye creatures”, as Pils calls the strangely curved shape with a dot in it.
Tobias Pils, „The Space Between Us“, 2021
Source: © Tobias Pils/Courtesy Galerie Eva Presenhuber/Photo: Jorit Aust
But why the horse? “People can have a psychological connection to this animal and – through riding – a physical connection,” he says, admitting: “It’s good to paint.”
Despite these representational motifs, Pils sees his paintings as abstract art. “I don’t want to tell stories,” says Pils. “The bag is never empty with my pictures, they are happy and also sad, I like it when they are light and dark, loud and quiet.” In any case, the combination of Rockenschaub and Pils works wonderfully in the magnificent rooms of the Presenhuber Gallery.
Eva Presenhuber: “Vienna brings it.”
But why is the gallery owner really expanding to Vienna? Does she see great potential for new customers here? The market is not the main idea, she emphasizes, 90 percent of trade is global. But more exhibitions mean more goods, i.e. more sales on site or later at trade fairs.
It is important to Presenhuber to “bring their artists to Vienna”. On the one hand, many of them are not yet represented in any Viennese gallery. On the other hand, many would not even know the city. The Eva Presenhuber Gallery’s program includes internationally renowned names such as Adam Pendleton and Carroll Dunham, Steven Shearer and Amy Feldman.
Last but not least, she is reacting to a challenge from many artists who do not always exhibit in the same rooms, but want to produce for new places, reveals the gallery owner. She will concentrate on her program for two to three years, and then perhaps also take on new Viennese artists.
Above all, however, Eva Presenhuber is probably the one that has won many people over for the Austrian capital in recent years: “Vienna does well because I like it here.”