Galerie Max Hetzler is pleased to present There’s a ghost in my house, Toby Ziegler’s third solo show in our Parisian gallery.

In his process-oriented practice, Toby Ziegler delves into the relation between images, objects and space. His hybrid practice involves a wide range of sources reworked with digital as well as manual tools, compressing very fast and very slow processes into a single work. In this exhibition, two bodies of works meet: five oil on aluminum and five paper on Dibond.

With his works on aluminum, Toby Ziegler dialogues with Georges de la Tour (1593- 1652) and Jan Van Eyck (v. 1390-1441). Three images, Magdalena with the Smoking Flame (c. 1642-1644), The Flea Catcher (c. 1638) and The Arnolfini Portrait (1434), are manipulated and painted meticulously, sometimes multiplied, and transported into a space at the limits of abstraction. At the outcome of this patient process, Toby Ziegler uses an electric sander to rapidly take the paint off. The blocks covering the painting’s surface are a reference to the Modernist grid, the ultimate negation of figuration, and also to the grid of pixelation, which is the true origin of jpeg images found online.

The works on Dibond draw from an imagery created by the artist over a decade ago using early 3D design software. Painted in a palette restricted to black and white, some enhanced with touches of pink, star-like patterns articulate a space uniting depth and flatness, hard-edge qualities and the artist’s gesture. Sanding is then used to create areas of blurred, luminescent pattern, evoking a hilly landscape.

These two bodies of work, the recent series of figurative oils on aluminum and the abstract landscapes uncovered after many years, reveal as they are exhibited side by side the strong contrasts and equivalences at the heart of Toby Ziegler’s work.

Toby Ziegler (1972, London).

Lives and works in London. His work has been the subject of solo exhibition in renowned institutions such as Freud Museum, London (2018); The Hepworth Wakefield, Wakefield (2017) ; New Art Centre, Salisbury (2014); off-site exhibition at Q-park 3-9, Old Burlington Street, London (2012), Zabludowicz Collection, Sarisalvo and Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma, Helskinki (2012); Zabludowicz Collection, London, travelled to New Art Gallery, Walsall (2011); Minsheng Art Museum, Shanghai (2010); The State Ermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg (2009); Tate Britain, London (2007); Le Plateau, Paris (2006); Le Consortium, Dijon (2005). Group exhibitions include musée des Beaux-Arts, Rouen (2019); Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, Birmingham (2017); The Art Gallery of Uzbekistan, Tashkent (2016); Guandong Times Museum, Ghuangzhou (2014); Museum of Old and New Art, Tasmania (2013); Aston Hall, Birmingham (2012); Malmö Konsthall, Malmö (2008). Toby Ziegler’s works are part of renowned collections such as Arts Council England, London; British Council, London; Tate Britain, London; Goss-Michael Foundation, Dallas; Museum of Old and New Art, Tasmania; and Zabludowicz Collection, London.