Working across digital rendering, printed sculpture and moving image, Tobias Tarland translates fragilities of existence into a timeless, unlocatable parallel world. Living skeletal animals, enigmatic creatures and figures suspended in states of transition populate his stages. The contradictions of human nature, the fragile relationship between civilization and nature, and the tension between spirituality, alienation and longing are among the central motifs of Tarland’s work.

Born in 1988 in southern Germany, Tarland lives and works in Berlin. Drawing from the visual language of the European Old Masters as well as from digital new media – different entry points into his single evolving cosmos – he layers symbolic imagery with sociocultural excavation to create atmospheres of wonder, unease and ambiguity. Tenderness and latent violence, attraction and repulsion are the forces that animate his work. ‘What preoccupies me above all,’ Tarland has said, ‘is the sensitive in a world full of quiet brutality – a reality my work does not lament, but seeks to understand.’