It’s about the entirety – that’s what comes to my mind when thinking about Tomicek’s work. His show WORLD revolves around something we together call world. Under this term we simply summarize everything we can experience: dark waters of unknown depth as well as bare bottoms of charming puttos, the wisdom of fools, and the happiness we will find in any place as long as we are in the right company, the laws of nature appear here as equals to our passions and drives. Tomicek’s bold scheme to show the whole in selected bits is remarkably true to the diversity and wonder of being, in all its contradictions and its sense of elegance: Romanticism at the beginning of the 21st century. -Thomas Schirmböck, curator and art historian, Founder of the Zephyr Space for Photography in conjunction with the Reiss-Engelhorn Museum in Mannheim, Germany

Jenkins Johnson Gallery, New York, is pleased to present World, a solo exhibition by Austrian artist Timotheus Tomicek. This will be his first solo show in New York, and the gallery’s first show as a member of AIPAD. There will be an opening reception with the artist on Thursday, September 12 from 6 to 8 pm.

Timotheus Tomicek is interested in how we fit into the world, how our unique experiences, emotions, and thoughts come together to form a whole. The diversity of Tomicek’s media expands his approach to this expansive topic. World features videos, installations, still photographs, sculptures, and paintings. Tomicek brings together reduced versions of the whole as a coherent account of humanity and our many facets.

Tomicek’s new media makes World an exhibition on the cutting edge of technology, reaching beyond the sphere of the arts. “Baiser” is an interactive video projection that follows the viewers as they walk around the piece: we can inspect and embrace it but never quite obtain it. Similarly, Tomicek’s digital video installations, such as “Correspondence” and “Glass Girl,” break technological standards by employing thousands of still photographs, threaded together to create subtle video-like movement that is uncanny and unnatural. The Huffington Post writes, “Tomicek’s intense fixation on his subjects asks you to look closer. Suddenly everyday actions begin to look surreal, as the still figure shifts ever so slightly.” Tomicek’s light installations, particularly “Gate,” challenge the boundary between the physical and the projected. Tomicek uses highly contrasting colors to push the limits of perception as the gate begins to look like an entrance to a new reality.

World’s variety and all-encompassing nature is indicative of a universal notion of being. Tomicek invites us to more than just a glance at each piece: he lends us his idea of the world, while also giving us an alternate view of our own. As the artist writes, “Unity, dissolution, illusion, and reality do not oppose one another but exist parallel and simultaneously.” Having finished a residency in Rome as a part of the Celeste Prize and presenting his work in VoltaNY in 2012, Tomicek brings a global perspective to this exhibition.

Tomicek lives and works in Vienna. He studied photography, film, and visual art in Vienna and earned his Masters Degree from the Universität für Musik und darstellende Kunst Wien. His work has been exhibited throughout Europe, including a solo exhibition at C/O Editions in Berlin. He was a Celeste Prize Finalist in Italy in 2012, a 2010 Finalist for the Arte Laguna Prize, Venice, Italy, and received the 15th Welde Art Prize in Photography in 2009. Following his successful solo project at Volta New York 2012, Tomicek was reviewed in Artinfo, The New York Examiner, The Huffington Post, Hamptons Art Hub, FAD, and CollabCubed.