Daniel Pitín | Spiel mit Köpfen

Daniel Pitin’s preoccupation with the deconstruction of visual surfaces has characterised his paintings since the beginning of his involvement with painting. In the new works on view in our exhibition, he finds a new freedom and a heightened desire that lend the paintings an engaging atmospheric density. Formally, he refers to late modernism, constructivism, and the Bauhaus: K. Malevich, Bohumil Kubišta and Josef Čapek, or Oscar Schlemmer, after whose work “Playing with Heads” the exhibition is named, are relevant references. The unifying aspect of the paintings is their formal solution and the absence of individualised bodies (heads) of the actors. The moment the persons are constructed from formal elements, the background of the landscape, or the interior, gains an almost material presence, which is the charm of this double game of painterly references.

The staging of impersonality and absence is also related to the current use of social media, with its corresponding cult of personality and self-expression. Daniel Pitin: “By removing the personality of the figures from the paintings and replacing them with simple geometric shapes, I was able to focus my attention more on the surrounding space and the light that permeates these shapes.”

The new series of paintings was also preceded by a process of self-exploration. Daniel Pitin: “One day I realised that I was completely overwhelmed with the search for the originality of my own visual language. I decided to reconsider and to deal with the questions of expression that were essential to me. So I preferred not to worry about ‘originality’ and to start exploring individual paths in my paintings, placing pictorial elements in new contexts and situations. My subjects are direct quotes from films or taken from everyday life, such as snapshots from holidays. Compositionally, I am interested in the arrangement and visual presence of the scenes. During this re-composition, ‘mistakes’ often creep in, imperfections that I also deliberately bring about in order to gain new freedoms from them and to open up a new game. Something of the original image is lost, and this absence frees the field for new hidden emotions and contents. This process is often unfinished in order to remain open for the viewer. Memories and memory become present, and the image (ideally) takes on its new reality.

The contents themselves often do not interest me, in some ways they even disturb me. They are only material to be able to show the transformation of time and space. So I implement the temporality of memory and the pictorial space presents itself as an environment and place of past events.”