The figures that Eiko Gröschl portrays are silhouetted, appearing as incomplete and desolate. The figures have been made with smeared pastel markings, depicting tapering limbs belonging to slightly opaque bodies. The comforts and the displeasures of daily life are highlighted in wistful and fleeting moments such as in “Sleepy Walk” where a figure sits alone on a bed and gazes at something unknown. Two trucks during the night in “Am Weg gesehen,” or a dark figure that is dwarfed by a large tree in “Lacken, Reflektion” imply a sense of alienation that looms in the atmosphere of each painting like a stalking shadow. The purposeful positioning of the figures on the fringes of the painting and the obscuring of individual identities heightens the palpable auras of loneliness and isolation. An optimistic gloominess, emotive while ruthlessly exposed, is embedded in his portrayal of existentialist longing, both hypnagogic and nostalgic.

While simultaneously treating his motifs with a palpable sensitivity for moods and emotions, Eiko Gröschl is an artist that treats the canvas with a sensibility for its material, such as when he lets raw canvas peek through the paint. At times, the figures and rural fields of grass recede or meld together, allowing the materials to come into focus. These mercurial landscapes are saturated with cold blue and grey tones giving a suggestion to fog, wind, and changing sky.

SETAREH X is showcasing the Austria-born artist in his third exhibition in Germany, having also been presented in Mexico, the United States, and across Europe since 2017. Eiko Gröschl has been exhibited in group shows and solo exhibitions such as Zephyr at Harkawik in Los Angeles in 2023 and at various art fairs including Spark Art Fair Vienna in 2024, Art Cologne and A broom will leap out of the forest at NADA Miami in 2023. Eiko Gröschl was shown for the first time in Düsseldorf in the group exhibition Taking Root at KIT in 2019. Eiko Gröschl lives and works in Vienna after graduating from Vienna’s Academy of Fine Arts.