PALOMA VARGA WEISZ: CONDITION I - VI
MASSIMODECARLO is pleased to present Condition I-VI and Blue Room, two distinct yet interwoven exhibitions by Paloma Varga Weisz and Sophie von Hellermann, marking Varga Weisz’s first solo presentation in Hong Kong and the first-ever collaboration between the two artists.
May 29 – August 30, 2025
The first room is dedicated entirely to Paloma Varga Weisz and her Condition I–VI - a series of six ceramic heads that at first appear almost identical, but slowly reveal their differences. The first five sculptures depict the same subject repeated across different days, colours, and moods. Subtle shifts in expression, the pressure of a fingertip here, a dent in the clay there, suggest variations not in identity, but in state. It’s less a portrait than a process, doing the same thing again and again, and watching how it quietly changes. The repetition becomes a form of attention - a way of staying with a form until it reveals its emotional register.
Each head carries its own set of marks, made visible through touch: fingerprints, ridges, and unglazed surfaces that preserve the immediacy of the making. They don’t try to be perfect. Instead, they feel close, not just to the artist, but to the moment they were made. “Same, same, but different”, as Paloma puts it.
The sixth sculpture in the series stands apart. It breaks the rhythm, as this character has distinctively different facial features. While the first five works feel emotionally porous, this figure seems fully present, unyielding, and composed. It doesn’t belong to the same emotional loop as the others, and that’s precisely the point. Paloma describes it as a “disturbing element” in the sequence - not disturbing in appearance, but in its difference. A kind of interruption.
She created it while reflecting on her first time exhibiting in Asia - a personal invitation toward a culture she does not yet know. As with many of her sculptures, there’s a sense that these figures have arrived from another time - ancient, maybe sacred, but also unmistakably contemporary. They hold a kind of stillness that belongs only to the present.