This contemporary artwork features a striking textured surface with a cracked, mosaic-like pattern. The predominant colors are shades of gray, creating a monochromatic, industrial aesthetic. The overall composition emphasizes the fragmented, disintegrating nature of the material, evoking a sense of decay and impermanence. The subject matter is ambiguous, though the intricate web of cracks and fissures suggests a metaphorical representation of the human condition or the passage of time. The artist's technique likely involved layering and manipulating materials to achieve this weathered, weathered appearance, alluding to themes of fragility, erosion, and the impermanence of existence. ...
Paula Santomé fluidly works between drawing, sculpture and installation within her research-based practice. Using clay, graphite and aluminium as her primary tools, Santomé examines the resistant potential of youth culture. Parties and clubs in particular serve as engaging contexts for Santomé to work with, reading these gatherings as anti-capitalist spaces of cultural exchange and communion. Her clay reliefs depict dancing clubbers, or an aluminium sculpture might crystalize two lovers kissing. Caught in a state of defiance and abandon, her work heralds figures who reject dominant social structures and embrace individuality. Santomé also often weaves mythologies into her bodies of work, finding intimacy and empowerment in transgressive figures such as Medusa. The clay works are mesmerising to encounter, like unearthing archaeological fragments,yet what comes into view is instead a contemporary scene of partygoers. Santomé’s embrace of mythology in a feminist lens links her work to artists such as Monica Sjöö, Nancy Spero or Ana Mendieta, yet her melding of the contemporary within this classical reading creates a novel space for Santomé to work within. ...
