Esquire Studio Sessions: Daniel Domig takes us inside his new solo exhibition ‘Fool’s Paradise’

Ahead of his latest solo show, we visited the artist in Sydney's Chalk Horse gallery for a tour of his humanoid houseplants

By Tyler Dane Wingco

Published: Jun 24, 2025

‘AUGENWEIDE’, or German for ‘feast for the eyes’, is how the artist Daniel Domig would like viewers to experience his latest solo exhibition, Fool’s Paradise. “I like this idea that painting is essentially not so much a picture, as it much a space for your gaze to travel to, into, and out of,” he tells Esquire. “And that takes some time from the viewer; a willingness to stand in front of a painting and to understand what we’re looking at, and the reward is all the more special.”

It’s the driest winter morning of the week when we meet Domig at Sydney’s Chalk Horse gallery, where he’s been painting a mural in the space’s window display for the past week since arriving from his home in Austria. Domig’s murals are typically permanent, but his Sydney project, depicting humanoid-foliage echoed throughout his exhibition, will instead be painted over once the show wraps on July 19. “It’s the temporary mural,” he says with a smirk. “It’s the grand gesture for those who show up in person. It’s the lived experience that’s the priority for this show.”

Community and connection is at the heart of Fool’s Paradise. A figurative painter since his days studying at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, Domig’s interested in depicting bodily experiences rather than anatomical correctness. In a series of works throughout the space, his figures aren’t restrained to clear binaries; as though put through an X-Ray, you can see their skeleton and pumping arteries. He holds up the underside of his forearm, drawing the connection between human communities and mycelium networks as the throughline of his latest works.

“One thing I’ve noticed, it’s been difficult for many, including myself, to come to terms with the [climate crisis] because it’s often brought to us in such vast questions of the glaciers melting and the rainforests,” says Domig. “Those are enormous ideas to bring into your daily life as issues. But then I had this understanding that there is a problem already happening with my houseplants, like, if we’re not able to even keep our houseplants alive, how are we going to deal with the grander problems of the climate? [Fool’s Paradise] is this slightly humorous but very serious merging of the climate crisis as seen through the human in his broken relationship with his houseplants.” One work he sits in front of during our interview neatly packages this idea: a house plant ablaze lights up the composition in orange, so bright that it renders its owner beside translucent, their ribs and pelvis softened to jelly.

Ahead of the solo show, which is now open, we paid Domig a visit to learn more about his process and what sparked his thinking behind his latest works. Watch his full Esquire Studio Sessions below.