Couple

Paloma Varga Weisz (b. 1966, Mannheim, Germany) explores themes of memory, mortality, transformation, metamorphosis, and the tragicomic. Art historical and literary resonances pervade her work. Varga Weisz subsumes influences of German folklore, Christian iconography, and Modernist sculpture into a distinctive personal style, characterized both by playful Surrealism and emotional candor. In many of her sculptures and drawings, Varga Weisz depicts imaginary characters resembling Surreal bodies from fairy tales and folklore.

Carved in limewood, the warm surface of which finds its resemblance with the (human) figure, the Couple, 2014 depicts a surreal setting with a 19 century-dressed man and woman gazing at female genitals, placed right in-between two figures. Left in silence, stillness, and anonymity, the only feature suggestive of a link to a specific time and place is their wardrobe, echoing ties to a higher social class and conservative political views. Characteristic for its uncanny quality and ties with Psychoanalyses, namely regarding the fetishization of the female body, Varga Weis depicts the female genitals as the other emphasized here by the estranged looks of both characters. With subtle humor and irony, characteristic of her practice, the ambiguous setting insinuates a dream-like scenery where anything is possible but nothing certain, resonating the forgotten, the suppressed, and the imaginary, which has been concealed, or on the contrary surfaced by the mind.