Untitled #5

Paloma Varga Weisz is not only a seasoned sculptor but also a talented painter. Since her early training as a woodcarver in the late 1980s, Varga Weisz has continuously made watercolours alongside her sculptures, the immediacy of the medium acting as a counterpoint to the meticulous process of wood carving and ceramics. Echoing the sculptures’ ethereal presence, her watercolours depict a host of elusive characters, surreal and folkloric, that occupy the same transitory realm. As they move between history and the present, between different societal roles and alternative identities, Varga Weisz’s figures convey trauma, hope, fragility, comedy, peace, naivety, innocence, limitation and possibility.

The subjects of her watercolour drawings often appear in a state of metamorphosis, their faces’ serene expressions distilled with emotional intimacy, oscillating in mood between absurdity and abjection, humour and pathos. Pedro Cera, a leading Portuguese gallery focusing on contemporary art, writes on their web page:

Her wood-carved sculptures, paintings, drawings and watercolors explore themes of memory, mortality, transformation, metamorphosis, the uncanny and the tragicomic. Art-historical and literary resonances pervade her work – German folklore, Christian iconography, and Modernist sculpture. Varga Weisz subsumes these influences into a distinctive personal style, characterized both by playful surrealism and emotional candour. In many of her sculptures and drawings, she depicts imaginary characters – hybrid anthropomorphic creatures which recall the surreal bodies of fairy tales and folklore.

Varga Weisz’s figures are often simplified to capture an essence of the human form, and to this end her approach draws especially upon painting. The work of Piero della Francesca (c. 1415-92) of the Early Renaissance, Cranach the Elder (1472-1553) of the later German Renaissance and the Surrealists, are important touchstones.

Despite this framework of reference and expansive art historical allusion, Varga Weisz’s characters live in the present, eschewing nostalgia. They have an innate fragility and stillness, and yet at the same time an inherent strength. Fluid in being and action, they morph between human and animal

and draw not solely upon myth or fairytale, but also on the endless possibilities of childhood imagination that – at least for a time – knows no bounds. It is significant that, all through her work, her forms are not pre-planned: Varga Weisz always works intuitively, waiting to see who or what ultimately emerges from her chosen material.

Her watercolours and drawings present a world of masquerades, disguises and role reversals. Varga Weisz’s starting point for this poetic and narrative work is often her own life experiences, yet it also reflects wider themes of identity, societal “norms” and historical stereotyping.

Provenance

CFHILL, Stockholm, Skogspromenad, 8 October – 3 November 2021.

Firestorm Foundation (acquired from the above).

Copyright Firestorm Foundation