Daniel Pitín (b. 1977, Prague, Czech Republic) is a leading figure among the generation of artists to have emerged since the fall of communism in Central and Eastern Europe. He received his education from the Academy of Fine Arts, Prague, Czech Republic in 2001, and continues to live and work in Prague. Exhibitions include Liang Fu, Chantal Khoury, Daniel Pitín, Nadia Waheed, Nicodim, Los Angeles (2024); The Ballad of the Children of the Czar, Galeria Nicodim, Bucharest (2024); The Newcomers Association, hunt kastner, Prague (2024, solo); DISEMBODIED, Nicodim, Los Angeles (2024); Time Machine, Nicodim, New York (2023, solo); Galeria Nicodim, Bucharest: 10 Years, Galeria Nicodim, Bucharest (2023); Sommerkino, Czech Center, Berlin (2022, solo); A Race of Peeping Toms, Nicodim, Los Angeles (2020, solo); A Paper Tower, Galerie Rudolfinum, Prague (2019, solo); Formal Encounters, Galeria Nicodim, Bucharest (2018); Broken Windows, House of Art, České Budejovice (2018, solo); Grotto, Charim Gallery, Vienna (2018, solo); Crystal Gardens, GRIMM, Amsterdam (2017, solo); The Mechanical Flowers, Nicodim, Los Angeles (2017, solo). Pitín is collected by the the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Knoxville Museum of Art, and his solo institutional exhibitions include Cover Story, Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art (2012); and After the Fall, Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art, Peekskill and the Knoxville Museum of Art, Knoxville (2011).
hunt kastner
The paintings of Daniel Pitín are firmly holding on to the eternal distinction between light and darkness. Light, dispersed from an invisible and ungraspable source focuses on the surface of the canvas, piercing through it and finding its way around and reflecting through numerous forms folded into the composition of the image somewhere between architecture, scenography and a vivid inner space. The play of light and darkness is thus the key element of formation of the space, its moods and variability seemingly frozen in the static image on the canvas, yet still breathing with fresh inputs coming from its extraneous environment and ocular abilities of its viewers. The given matter, building blocks of the content stays in the constant flux of transfiguration, with shades of approaching light, through the light, as light itself. Pitín is thus touching field of prefigurations of his work, its main referential points in Czech avant-garde photography of František Drtikol, Jaromir Funke or Josef Sudek, in tradition of cubist painting and even deeper in history, as in baroque paintings through the technique of chiaroscuro, based on strong distinctions between tonal variations, therefore conceiving a dramatic, almost theatrical visual feeling. …the response to light is a response to all the possibilities of life itself. It may seem as if the language Pitín is utilising lies deep within the abstraction of forms, but don’t be confused by the first glimpse of perception since all you see is as far from the concept of abstract painting as possible, with a slightly more careful second look all the included proposes a clear statement of meaning, function and their representation, despite the fact that the depicted shows a strongly outwardly character. However, we can boldly claim that Pitín’s language is one of a certain whimsical abstraction without any specifically abstracted forms involved, such language being closer to an expression through sign systems and analogies, through referential hints and clues which allows us to decode given messages from a certain focal point. One of Pitín’s long-term allusions is to the work of Alfred Hitchcock whose main instrument was the expression through signs. Let’s just take as an example the horrifying idea of Birds as an unprecedentedly twisted apparition of the Other in the physical form of the most natural element imaginable, of creatures we are used to connect with singing, with the celebration of life and beauty, living in the sky, just slightly below the angels. Suddenly these innocent creatures turn into a manifestation of all our fears. The explanation in Hitchcock’s case could be quite simple, given the period of escalated Cold War, one year after the Cuban Missile Crisis. Pitín’s analogies are more complex, as our fears nowadays are. The strategy implemented is the same though. With numerous intertwined conflicts of our era, where shadows are thrown and mirrored on a large scale, it’s quite impossible to highlight one specific idea of the Other since we can’t possibly know what the Other is. People and situations are emerging out of distant parts of the world, our neighbourhoods, our governments, media, the Internet…just name it. Thus it is important to notice that the idea of a certain fear is no longer as simple as it may seem, fear or better put anxiety is not only bipolar but multipolar at least. Veneers of information and meanings are overlapping and merging, nothing formulates an understandable, easily readable message. In a similar fashion, Pitín’s paintings propose an open variety of readings. By day fantastic birds flew through the petrified forests, and jewelled alligators glittered like heraldic salamanders on the banks of the crystalline rivers. By night the illuminated man raced among the trees, his arms like golden cartwheels, his head like a spectral crown… A significant shift in terms of Pitín’s painting technique is the fact that he has been for the first time using real life models for the depiction of figures on his canvases. This shift from the creation of post-representational image out of an already existing representation by the medium of photography or film shows a necessity to emphasize the humanity, its physical presence, its materiality and dimensions. Not only the figures are painted on the bases of real people, also every scenographic or architectural element has its basis in physical precursors. Such a development of painterly attitude demonstrates a certain fatigue from the digitally induced disconnection of our era of the mass virtual reproduction.
Realizujeme obklady krbů na míru dle přání zákazníka. Nabízíme široký výběr obkladů a tvarů krbů.
Nadia Waheed (b. 1992, Saudi Arabia) lives and works in Austin, TX. She graduated with a BFA in Painting & Drawing from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2015. Exhibitions include: Liang Fu, Chantal Khoury, Daniel Pitín, Nadia Waheed, Nicodim, Los Angeles (2024); The Ballad of the Children of the Czar, Galeria Nicodim, Bucharest (2024); VAMPIRE::MOTHER curated by Jasmine Wahi, Anat Ebgi, Los Angeles (2024); A Strange Icarus, Nicodim, Los Angeles (2023, solo); MATERNITY LEAVE: NONE OF WOMEN BORN, Nicodim in collaboration with the Green Family Foundation, Dallas, DISEMBODIED, Nicodim, New York (2023); Wonder Women II, Jeffrey Deitch, Los Angeles (2022); Heavy Bend, Gallery 1957, London (2022, solo); YOU ME ME YOU, Nicodim, Los Angeles (2022); Wonder Women, Jeffrey Deitch, New York (2022); Madeleine Bialke, M. Florine Démosthène, Sahara Longe, Nadia Waheed, Alexander Berggruen, New York (2022); Am I Human Yet, Arsenal Contemporary New York (2021, solo); I Climb, I Backtrack, I Float, Mindy Solomon Gallery, Miami (2020, solo); Sacred Vessel (pt.2), Arsenal Contemporary, New York (2020); Crossroads, Patel Gallery, Toronto (2020).
