Exhibition text

HUG ME BAREFOOT marks Paula Santomé’s first solo exhibition in Germany and inaugurates Kaiser- wache as a temporary exhibition space. Kaiserwache is pleased to present two newly-commissioned works of the same title on May 27, 2022.

Paula Santomé’s practice interrogates youth-based culture, including graffiti, free running and rave, thereby highlighting the inherent tension of cultural resistance towards capitalist domination strug- gling to free itself from the usurping structures it inhabits. Her work makes palpable how perceptual changes in subjectivity constitute a driving force of greater social change.

Her recent large-scale drawings of panoramic party landscapes present various contradictory facets of rave culture. Inhabiting these landscapes, scattered groups of raving women are oftentimes depic- ted urinating, vomiting or passed out in between beer cans and other rave residue, giving the impres- sion of an event that has run its course. What we see is not pretty, the raver’s drug-fueled attempts of mental escapism ultimately being stifled by the inevitable limits of the body.

»The comedown then follows as the return of the repressed. In this case, the hedonistic pleasure and feeling of connectedness and realness is replaced by a look at our lives with ‘sober senses’, which takes in our isolation, meaninglessness and atomisation. In this sense, it is the comedown that ex- plains the raver’s high.«¹
Santomé’s drawings address the legacy of rave as a politically relevant occurrence capable of engen- dering collectivity and autonomy as well as fostering free self-expression, experimental living and the ‘specter of a world that can be free’.
In continuing her inquiry into raving, the exhibition unites many of the concerns of her recent dra- wings. For HUG ME BAREFOOT the artist produced two clay reliefs on-site in a span of five days. Clay was directly sculpted onto metal grids and left to dry naturally. During this drying process the clay responded to the temperature and humidity of its environment and started fissuring intensely, thereby fragmenting the image. Over time the images will become less recognizable, segments may possibly break off entirely by the end of the show. In doing so, the physical work disintegrates like a memory, referring back to the artist‘s personal recollections the motifs are derived from.

Located in the main room, the freestanding double-sided low relief depicts two hands exchanging a once lit joint, which is not made of clay. An open wine bottle is rendered on the lower half of the relief. The other side contains a head profile bearing the artist‘s facial features speaking into the ear of a vaguely rendered figure to presumably counter loud music. Although another reading may interpret the head kissing her opposite on the cheek. Either way, the image imparts a feeling of intimacy and sensuality. The ear of the receiver is adorned with real ear jewelry and shaped in detail. The only other pronounced body part is her arm wrapping aroundwhere the talker‘s body would be located. Perhaps the figures are leaning in for a hug.

This selective sculpting described above; emphasizing certain parts while intentionally leaving raw sections, bears relation to the tradition of non-finito. In this sense, the reliefs are hovering in a hybrid state between preliminarity and finalization.

The second relief is mounted to the wall showing a head, whose eyes are obscured by a faucet from which the head is drinking. The faucet resembles a phallus spewing a liquid.
Santomé puts a lens on subtle private (inter)actions, which may appear unremarkable in a crowded rave environment, but in isolation gain a dimension of symbolism and significance. The works create an interchange of experience and meanings to reflect on festive collectivity and the feeling of connectedness.

1 Mark Fisher, Baroque Sunbursts, 2016

Text by Ilja Zaharov