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The Butterfly Effect
“Does the flutter of a butterfly's wings set off a whirlwind in one’s mind?”
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. These spectral presences blur spatialities, temporalities, and corporalities, where boundaries between inner experience and outer world become fluid. 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 cyclical ideas such as forms of entering, expanding and contracting, breathing, turning, pumping, shimmering, shifting, reflecting, birthing, transforming, and repeating. The play of light and color is essential: careful atmospheric shifts in brightness and transparency bring about a contemplative sense of vibrancy and allude 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 shown individually or repeated in rhythmic patterns, often zoomed in on and decontextualized by placing them in enigmatically empty surroundings.
Familiar imagery is repositioned by withholding or emphasizing details in combinations that seduce to a slowed-down scrutinizing. Some parts are strongly blurred and suggest movement, a going out of focus, or a transformation into abstract ambiguity. In contrast, other parts are sharply defined, with crisp details and bright highlights, as an analog to the concentration of the eye.
The Butterfly Effect
“Does the flutter of a butterfly's wings set off a whirlwind in one’s head?”
Materialities hover between glasslike transparency and marble opacity, the human skin, and intangible fields of energy. These manipulations of objecthood allow for the possibility of multiple interpretations of a singular shape, encouraging an inquiry into the nature of perception and proposing a less dualistic view between real and imaginary, memory and the present, dreamworld and waking state.
“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 investigating the transcendent and the sublime through painting. 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. Through a web of temporary visual metaphors, he seeks to connect the metaphysical to the personal, creating a dynamic visual experience that invites ongoing dialogue with the viewer. Rather than positing fixed events, Patiniott's work functions like a network of visual kōans, offering a 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. He has participated in solo and group exhibitions internationally including Stedelijk Museum Schiedam, PuntWG (Amsterdam), Cinnnamon (Rotterdam), Heden (Den Haag), WHATSPACE (Tilburg), MKgalerie (Rotterdam), Galerie Sturm (Nuremberg), Anna Zorina Gallery (New York), Dordrechts Museum, Whitechapel Gallery (London), Museum Provincetown (Massachusetts), Arti et Amicitiae (Amsterdam), Museum Hilversum, and 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 mind?”
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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