Paloma Varga Weisz. Multiface

The exhibition Multiface is one of the most extensive presentations of works by Paloma Varga Weisz. It brings together her recent series of works with key pieces from over three decades, offering insight into her poetic and simultaneously subversive artistic practice. Her works—sculptures, watercolors, drawings, and installations—delve into existential questions about identity, memory, vulnerability, and transformation. Figures and forms oscillate between the familiar and the foreign, the corporeal and the narrative.

Trained as a wood sculptor, Varga Weisz deliberately breaks with the tradition of the craft. By mastering traditional techniques while simultaneously subverting them, she creates works that challenge classical notions of materiality and form. Her sculptures combine historical references with surreal elements, humorous disruptions, and subtle irony, impressively exploring the boundaries between artisanal precision and contemporary reflection.

A central focus of the exhibition is Wild People (1998—2024), a series of works ranging from small ceramic figures to monumental bronze sculptures. These hybrid beings, which combine human and animal traits, embody a deconstruction of gender roles and family ideals. They raise questions about isolation, community, and transitions from humans to nature. The sculpture Rug People (2011) plays a special role in this exhibition: Inspired by the story of the former railway station in Folkstone in England from which soldiers departed for battle during World War I, this work reflects on themes such as migration, loss, and the fragility of human stories. For Varga Weisz, this also becomes a quiet homage to her father, who had to flee from National Socialists-occupied Paris during World War II as a Jewish refugee. Rug People (2011) functions as a monument to the resilience and vulnerability of human experiences.

Multiface(2019), a multi-faced silver head that looks in all directions, symbolizes the fluid boundaries of the self and the constant changes of life. The multiheaded nature of her works invites viewers to understand identity not as a selfcontained unit, but as an open, evolving structure that sees breaks and transitions as essential components of being. Multiface reveals the complexity of the human—not as an ambivalence to be overcome, but as its essential strength.

Paloma Varga Weisz (b. 1966 in Mannheim) is a sculptor, graphic artist, and painter. After training as a wood sculptor from 1987 to 1990 in Garmisch- Partenkirchen, she studied under Tony Cragg and Gerhard Merz at the Staatliche Kunstakademie Düsseldorf from 1990 to 1998. Her works poetically and subversively engage with themes such as identity, memory, and transformation. Varga Weisz lives and works in Düsseldorf.