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The Butterfly Effect
“Does the flutter of a butterfly's wings set off a whirlwind in one’s head?”
Micha Patiniott creates minimalistic and atmospheric paintings of everyday objects and processes in flux, blurring the boundaries of the mundane and the cosmic. Familiar and intimate subjects, such as the blinking of a butterfly’s wings, the throbbing of intimate body parts, the curving of a mathematical object, and the turning of an ambiguous portrait, are transformed into sensuous otherness through painterly modifications.
Bodies and objects are in flux: things float and are in the midst of changing form, entirely absent, or in various states of becoming. Patiniott’s hyper-focus on moments of transience reveals how small and seemingly insignificant events can hold personal significance while hinting at something beyond - on the level of the macro, the universal, or the sublime.
Patiniott explores most motifs in series, resulting in kindred images in transformations that reveal patterns, echoes, and divergences. they imply ideas such as expanding and contracting, breathing, turning, pumping, shimmering, shifting, reflecting, birthing, transforming, and repeating.
The play of light is essential and alludes to a contemporary take on historical painting techniques like impressionism and sfumato. A restrained palette of mono or duo chrome colors is juxtaposed with a shifting of local colors to the psychedelic. Objects are presented alone or in patterns, stripped of their context. The imagery is manipulated by emphasizing or withholding details, inviting closer inspection. Some elements are blurred to suggest a movement through time and abstraction, while others are sharply defined to mimic focused attention and stillness. The materials are portrayed as transparent or opaque, tangible or intangible, allowing for multiple interpretations of a single object and encouraging a more nuanced view of reality that transcends dualistic distinctions between real and imaginary, memory and present, dream and waking life.
The Butterfly Effect
“Does the flutter of a butterfly's wings set off a whirlwind in one’s head?”
“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
Patiniott embraces impermanence as a key element in experiencing the transcendent and sublime, building on postmodern ideas of hyper-subjectivity and deconstructed identities. This aligns with metamodernism's call to empathetically explore ever-shifting perspectives of the self and others. Through a web of temporary visual metaphors, Patiniott seeks to connect the metaphysical to the personal, creating a dynamic visual experience that invites ongoing dialogue with the viewer. Rather than fixed events, Patiniott's work functions like a network of visual kōans, offering a continuous and rhizomatic stream of perception.
“We work with being,
but non-being is what we use”
— 600 BC, kōan from the Tao Te Ching
Micha Patiniott works and lives in Amsterdam.
Patiniott was a resident artist at the Rijksakademie in 2006 and 2007. Solo exhibitions include Stedelijk Museum Schiedam, PuntWG (Amsterdam), Cinnnamon (Rotterdam), Heden (Den Haag), WHATSPACE (Tilburg) MKgalerie (Rotterdam), Galerie Sturm (Nuremberg), and Anna Zorina gallery (New York). Group exhibitions include the Dordrechts Museum, Whitechapel Gallery (London), Museum Provincetown (Massachusetts), Arti et Amicitiae (Amsterdam), Museum Hilversum, Provinciehuis Noord-Holland (Haarlem). His work is included in private, public and museum collections within the Netherlands and internationally.
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About
The Butterfly Effect - “Does the flutter of a butterfly's wings set off a whirlwind in one’s head?”
Micha Patiniott creates minimalistic and atmospheric paintings of everyday objects and processes in flux, blurring the boundaries of the mundane and the cosmic.
Familiar and intimate subjects, such as the blinking of a butterfly’s wings, the throbbing of intimate body parts, the curving of a mathematical object, and the turning of an ambiguous portrait, are transformed into sensuous otherness through painterly modifications.
Bodies and objects are in flux: things float and are in the midst of changing form, entirely absent, or in various states of becoming. Some elements are blurred to suggest a movement through time and abstraction, while others are sharply defined to mimic focused attention and stillness. The play of light is essential and alludes to a contemporary take on historical painting techniques like impressionism and sfumato. A restrained palette of mono or duo chrome colors is juxtaposed with a shifting of local colors to the psychedelic.
“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
Micha Patiniott works and lives in Amsterdam.
He was a resident artist at the Rijksakademie in 2006 and 2007. Solo exhibitions include Stedelijk Museum Schiedam, PuntWG (Amsterdam), Cinnnamon (Rotterdam), Heden (Den Haag), WHATSPACE (Tilburg) MKgalerie (Rotterdam), Galerie Sturm (Nuremberg), and Anna Zorina gallery (New York). Group exhibitions include the Dordrechts Museum, Whitechapel Gallery (London), Museum Provincetown (Massachusetts), Arti et Amicitiae (Amsterdam), Museum Hilversum, Provinciehuis Noord-Holland (Haarlem).
His work is included in private, public and museum collections within the Netherlands and internationally.
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