I am pleased to announce that Christian Ouwens Galerie will be showing brand new work by Micha Patiniott from May. The opening will take place on May 18, 2024 at 4:00 PM. I would have preferred to have made this announcement more than ten years ago. Because that's how long I've been following Patiniott's work closely. Previous work was strange, present, loud, it grabbed you by the spine. An undeniable force was already evident in the work. Completely different from the modest canvases on which he now throws himself with patient precision. Regardless, there were always two elements present: craftsmanship and a talent for seeing.
Through each work, I have been amazed over the years by the unbridled craftsmanship that Patiniott always captures in the canvas. No matter how big and bombastic what he depicts, the subtlety of the strokes, the beginnings and the lines never disappoint. And perhaps even more importantly, that talent for seeing. Choosing a quirky object or theme that you know will shock the viewer is easy. But sinking your teeth into that idiosyncrasy, making every line, smile, fold or shadow your own, in that persistence reveals the talent for looking that only an artist can have.
In short, I wanted to work with him. Pationott thought differently. He could not imagine how Christian Ouwens Galerie and Patiniott belonged together at that moment. As a gallery owner, you have no choice but to accept that only the artist knows his true artistic path. Over the years I saw Patiniott's work slowly change. The theme became more simplistic, smaller and more direct. It is precisely in that simplicity that there is a disarming attack on the viewer. For example, a blank sheet of paper with a crease, or a dog-ear, perhaps even the beginning of a drawing, always perfectly painted, has lost something. Something that you as a viewer cannot immediately place. A world of questions looms before you. Does that sheet symbolize the lack of an ending that never made it to paper or is it the hope of a story that can still start? And then those folds and the dog ear! Where has that sheet of paper been in the meantime that it looks so worn? And yet it has apparently been preserved. The precision of the craftsmanship is undiminished and now that Patiniott focuses on apparently smaller themes, the talent for seeing is more apparent than ever. Only through the endless details that he manages to incorporate into a painting from a sheet of paper can the viewer discover a world. That world only unfolds if the viewer devotes the same time and attention to the work and thus develops his own talent for seeing.
We have always maintained good contact and from a distance I have admired his work in recent years. The gallery has also developed and taken new directions. At some point you meet each other, you look at each other and you both know: now is the time. Time for the attacking simplicity of Patiniott's work that hangs on the walls of Christian Ouwens Galerie.
Christian Ouwens