Artist Toni van Tiel is a sculptor on paper. His works are two-dimensional, but he builds his works up as if the whole public space arises from the paper. In his drawings, he creates monuments, fountains, and roundabouts: sculptures in imaginary public spaces. ‘They are reduced sculptures. In drawings, the structure doesn’t have to be correct.’ Toni feels no need to realize these sculptures in three dimensions. They exist on paper, and the viewer’s imagination does the rest.
Ideas for the drawings come to him intuitively. ‘I’ll be riding on my bike and think about a single romanesco broccoli being grown on a farm. I’d love to walk through the city and come across all sorts of unexpected things, for instance because a city planner has been playing around with an endless amount of streetlamps, benches and trash cans. Humour plays a big role in my work; that comes automatically to me. But my drawings also have a certain itching power.’ That itching comes from a slight collision in the image which indicates the absurdity of the situation. You see an enormous sculpture proposed by Toni in one of his drawings and imagine how the diminutive passersby would gawk at it rather artlessly. Until you realize: those people are us.
• Recent exhibitions at Galerie Bart: Art on Paper Brussels 2023 • Art on Paper 2023 • Two Parts Impossible, One Part May Be 2021 • Art on Paper 2021 • Art on Paper 2020 • Drawing Room Madrid 2020.
CV
Toni van Tiel, born in 1979 in The Netherlands, currently works and lives in Eindhoven, the Netherlands. Toni finished his education at the AKV Sint Joost in ’s Hertogenbosch in 2009 and has been exhibiting his work since 2007 in both solo and group exhibitions in the Netherlands, Germany, Belgium and Spain. His work has been shown for instance at Stedelijk Museum Den Bosch NL; Hangar, Barcelona ES; Frise, Hamburg DE and Van Abbe Museum, Eindhoven. In 2021 Toni exhibited together with Jeroen Cremers in the duo exhibition ‘Two Parts Impossible, One Part May Be’ at Galerie Bart. Toni’s collaboration with Galerie Bart resulted in his participation in Drawing Room, Madrid ES, KunstRAI Amsterdam and Art on Paper Amsterdam.
Artworks
Press
2022 •
13.01 Het Parool Een enorm roombroodje gepresenteerd als architectonisch hoogtepunt by Edo Dijksterhuis.
2020 •
10.03 Raras Artes Drawing Room, VI edición, editorial.
29.02 Mas de Arte Drawing Room. El dibujo se crece en la Semana del Arte, editorial.
24.02 AD Architectural Digest Un resumen de lo que veremos en DRAWING ROOM 2020, editorial.
2019 •
10.10 Tilburg.com Draw the Line: expositie door Wobby.club bij Kunstpodium T, editorial.
01.02 Palet Magazine Toni van Tiel en Gerard Koek • A Cloud Collision Walkthrough by Merel van den Nieuwenhof.
