Drawing is unique and essential among artistic practices. Sometimes it’s the starting point and a conduit for new ideas, but a sketch can also be its own finished work. “Blende zum Morgen / Fade to Morning. Zeichnungen / Drawings,” an exhibition staged at Vienna’s Galerie Eva Presenhuber, presents a new body of pencil and ink drawings by Austrian artist Tobias Pils, revealing the dynamism of the medium, as well as its evolving place in Pils’s practice.
Tobias Pils, Untitled (2025). © Tobias Pils. Photo: Jorit Aust, courtesy of Galerie Eva Presenhuber.
Pils is best known for his monochromatic and grayscale paintings that incorporate elements of both figuration and abstraction. His works can feel like they’re dissolving right before you, lending a sense of inscrutability and offering the opportunity for endless interpretation. Even as a painter, Pils may call to mind a sketch artist, the way his lines and mark-making instill a hyperawareness of his hand. The Galerie Eva Presenhuber show, where the drawings are the final product and not preparation for painting, therefore offers an exciting glimpse into the mind and creative process of the artist.
Installation view of “Tobias Pils: Blende zum Morgen / Fade to Morning. Zeichnungen / Drawings” (2025). © Tobias Pils. Photo: Jorit Aust, courtesy of Galerie Eva Presenhuber.
Pils, in his 2024 book Drawings, shared, “My drawing habits have changed quite a bit within the last few years. From a daily routine into a ‘from time-to-time practice.’” He also described a preference to draw outside of the studio, instead choosing to work in places like his home or a storage room, suggesting a blurring of the lines between art and life. His ink drawings revisit past works, which he’s said are closer to meditations and reveal the emotional underpinnings of his more ambitious compositions. The pencil drawings, however, are more in line with the tradition of artistic studies, depicting notes, sketches, and designs.
Tobias Pils, Untitled (2025). © Tobias Pils. Photo: Jorit Aust, courtesy Galerie Eva Presenhuber.
Within the context of the Vienna show, the pencil and ink drawings are shown without hierarchy, illustrating a facet of Pils’s process and practice that can usually only be imagined through his paintings. Eschewing color entirely and relying on the inherent qualities of the ink and pencil, the irreducible core of his creative vision is exposed. Instead of the process or medium obscuring the artist’s original intent, the spontaneous and organic execution of these works lay bare the first thought. And, in the case of the ink drawings specifically, an enigmatic glimpse at an artist revisiting his own work.
“Blende zum Morgen / Fade to Morning. Zeichnungen / Drawings” is on view at Galerie Eva Presenhuber, Vienna, through December 19, 2025.
