Micha Patiniott
Micha Patiniott


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My work explores impermanence, perception, and transformation. I’m drawn to what slips, breaks, repeats, and returns—to the flickering threshold where form emerges and dissolves. Themes unfold through a language of emptiness and atmosphere, of doubling, layering, and sensual ambiguity.

I aim to dissolve boundaries between material and immaterial, between perception and flesh—bridging the mundane with the mystical, the tender with the raw. Each work becomes a space of suspended identity, where the ‘self’ loosens into perpetual uncertainty.


“Once Zhuangzi dreamt he was a butterfly, a butterfly flitting gaily about. He knew nothing about Zhuangzi. Then suddenly he awoke and he was at once solidly and unmistakably himself, Zhuangzi. But he didn’t know whether he was a man who dreamt he was a butterfly or was a butterfly dreaming he was a man. Surely there’s a difference between Zhuangzi and a butterfly. This is what we call the transformation of things.” - 4th century BC, from the Zhuangzi, a Daoist text by master Zhuangzi

Recurring motifs—isolated body parts, emptied objects, subtle ruptures—merge with references to art history and the volatile imagery of contemporary culture. The sacred meets the irreverent, the spiritual intertwines with the erotic. I work in painting and text, allowing them to blur into one another like echoes, veils, or breath.

Rather than offering clarity, the work dwells in states of resonance and possibility. Painting, here, becomes an act of presence, of holding space for what cannot be fully seen or named.

 

“We work with being,
but non-being is what we use”
- 600 BC, koan from the Tao Te Ching

Micha Patiniott

Vellum X, 45 x 40 cm, oil on canvas, 2024

Micha Patiniott lives and works in Amsterdam. He was a resident artist at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam (2006-2007) and at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown (2008-2009 and 2023-2024). International solo and group exhibitions include the Stedelijk Museum Schiedam; PuntWG (Amsterdam); Cinnamon (Rotterdam); Heden (Den Haag); WHATSPACE (Tilburg); MKgalerie (Rotterdam/Berlin); Galerie Sturm (Nuremberg); Dordrechts Museum; Whitechapel Gallery (London); Arti et Amicitiae (Amsterdam); Museum Hilversum; the Provincetown Art Association and Museum; Provinciehuis Noord-Holland (Haarlem); and Anna Zorina Gallery (New York).

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About

My work explores impermanence, perception, and transformation. I’m drawn to what slips, breaks, repeats, and returns—to the flickering threshold where form emerges and dissolves.

Themes unfold through a language of emptiness and atmosphere, of doubling, layering, and sensual ambiguity.

I aim to dissolve boundaries between material and immaterial, between perception and flesh—bridging the mundane with the mystical, the tender with the raw. Each work becomes a space of suspended identity, where the ‘self’ loosens into perpetual uncertainty.


“Once Zhuangzi dreamt he was a butterfly, a butterfly flitting gaily about. He knew nothing about Zhuangzi. Then suddenly he awoke and he was at once solidly and unmistakably himself, Zhuangzi. But he didn’t know whether he was a man who dreamt he was a butterfly or was a butterfly dreaming he was a man. Surely there’s a difference between Zhuangzi and a butterfly. This is what we call the transformation of things.” - 4th century BC, from the Zhuangzi, a Daoist text by master Zhuangzi

Recurring motifs—isolated body parts, emptied objects, subtle ruptures—merge with references to art history and the volatile imagery of contemporary culture.

The sacred meets the irreverent, the spiritual intertwines with the erotic. I work in painting and text, allowing them to blur into one another like echoes, veils, or breath.

Rather than offering clarity, the work dwells in states of resonance and possibility. Painting, here, becomes an act of presence, of holding space for what cannot be fully seen or named.

 

“We work with being,
but non-being is what we use”
- 600 BC, koan from the Tao Te Ching

Micha Patiniott

Vellum X, 45 x 40 cm, oil on canvas, 2024

Micha Patiniott lives and works in Amsterdam. He was a resident artist at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam (2006-2007) and at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown (2008-2009 and 2023-2024). International solo and group exhibitions include the Stedelijk Museum Schiedam; PuntWG (Amsterdam); Cinnamon (Rotterdam); Heden (Den Haag); WHATSPACE (Tilburg); MKgalerie (Rotterdam/Berlin); Galerie Sturm (Nuremberg); Dordrechts Museum; Whitechapel Gallery (London); Arti et Amicitiae (Amsterdam); Museum Hilversum; the Provincetown Art Association and Museum; Provinciehuis Noord-Holland (Haarlem); and Anna Zorina Gallery (New York).