Tim Eitel initiates an exchange between recollection and painting. The work on his pictures he
says is "a conversation about reality and memory" in which he engages the canvas. In the
course of this dialogue Eitel reflects on personal experiences creating a standalone
figural-abstract reality that needs to be internally consistent-the canvas has a strong will of
its own. That makes the scenes depicted in his paintings analogues or afterimages of a
situation rather than renditions of it. They are characterized by a certain openness that
enables the beholders to inject their own recollections into the pictorial space as well. The
dialogue between canvas and artist thus gives way to a colloquy between audience and finished
work. Not by coincidence many of the paintings by Eitel gathered in this catalog show people
in museums: these scenes facilitate the leap into the pictorial space. The beholders have
experienced a situation like the one shown in the pictures in the past or are experiencing it
right now and so they are already at the heart of the works they become part of the painting
and the picture becomes a particle of their recollection.
