Santiago de Paoli at Meyer Riegger / Berlin

Santiago de Paoli / Lieber Nebelkopf, die Blaue Brücke is open
26.04.24 – 15.06.24
Meyer Riegger, Berlin
Schaperstrasse 14
10719 Berlin, Germany
Chapel, 2024glazed ceramic, candle4 panelsoverall 42 x 73 cmeach ceramic ca. 30 x 17 cm
Solo y azul, 2024oil and acrylic on canvas304,8 x 175,3 cm210,8 x 43,2 cm
Take one, 2024oil on copper37 x 47cm
The trees look blue, 2024oil on glazed ceramic34,5 x 38 cm
Yellow bridge, 2024oil copper and wood3 elementscopper 89 x 200 cmwood 24 x 29,2 cm
Die Blaue Brücke, 2024glazed ceramic, 3 tiles, bread, peanutoverall 38 x 78 cm
Riding hot, 2023oil and acrylic on canvas, ravioli box, plaster300 x 264,2 cm
Hallo expresionista, 2024oil on copper, flower50,8 x 67,3 cm
My turn, 2023oil on copper, corks4 elementsoverall 62 x 177,5 cm
Red ride, 2024oil on copper, match boxoverall 51 x 80,5 cm
Yellow bridge, 2024oil on felt, oil on cardboard, plaster2 elementsoverall 46 x 76 cm
Nebelkopf, 2024oil on canvas241 x 120,5 cm
Mother, 2023oil on copper, 14 panelsoverall 232 x 538 cm
Coum in butterfly & worm, 2022oil on felt3 panelsoverall 46 x 96 cm

For this year’s edition of Gallery Weekend Berlin, Meyer Riegger shows works by the New York based painter Santiago de Paoli (b. 1978, Buenos Aires) for the first time in Germany.

 

Words, it seems, are hardly the best intermediaries when it comes to capturing Santiago de Paoli’s paintings. A critic went so far as to describe them as “beasts” some time ago, noting that they “escape any readymade classification or description”. Perhaps de Paoli’s paintings are better grasped in terms of temperature and weight, states of aggregation and compositions of materials, than description in words – words evoking meanings that can only lead us away from the reality of the painting itself, as opposed to toward it. Towards a reality that wants to be felt.

It is, after all, a closeness that de Paoli’s paintings demand. They arch, pulsate, rear up; they fever, stagger, bud and surge. They are erotic, intimate, warm – and yet they are never just one of these, but always already something else as well. They are metamorphoses. Unconventional formats and unusual materials (copper, felt, plaster, recycled textiles or wood) often lend them the look of sculptural objects in space.

In de Paoli’s oeuvre, painting is a link to what lies beyond the visible – which is not to say the invisible, but rather what we see with our eyes closed, what we feel as we vacillate between sleep and wakefulness, between unconsciousness and consciousness.