Double #2: Paula Santomé – Paradox / Kathrin Sonntag – Sobjects
Saturday, February 8 – Monday, April 21, 2025
In the Double exhibition format, a regional and an international position come together to create unexpected thematic links in two independent projects. For the second edition, curator Simone Neuenschwander has invited the two artists Paula Santomé (b. 1994, Spain, lives in Basel) and Kathrin Sonntag (b. 1981, Germany, lives in Berlin). The works of the two artists focus on the modalities of perception in our society. Using various media – Paula Santomé with sculpture and reliefs, Kathrin Sonntag with photography and objects – they examine the hidden contexts behind social structures or things that accompany us in everyday life.
In her exhibition, Paula Santomé explores how the domestic environment can become a source of conflict rather than a safe space. Drawing on the history of the women's rights movement, she looks at women's agency, which has often been limited by housework and motherhood. The artist draws on references in literature and ancient mythologies to question passed on gender roles and their conditioning. On hand-embossed aluminum reliefs, the artist shows various figures who are torn between an imposed identity and the desire to free themselves. In her works, Paula Santomé reveals hidden stories and controlling structures that inscribe themselves into identities and bodies with gestures that are as symbolic and caring as they are contradictory.
The exhibitions are supported by:
Hans und Renée Müller-Meylan Foundation
Erna und Curt Burgauer Foundation
Dr. Georg und Josi Guggenheim Foundation
In her exhibition, Kathrin Sonntag looks at our relationship to everyday objects. With her own system of order and playful humor, she explores the contradictory and whimsical layers of meanings, functions and prompts that communicate themselves in the appearance of the world of things. Her photographs, objects and objets trouvés are often presented in the context of installations and address the conditions of our perception, which the artist repeatedly puts to the test through pictorial inconsistencies and deceptions. In doing so, she plays with the paradoxical cultural history of photography – a medium that can depict “objective reality” on the one hand and manipulate the reality of the image itself on the other. In her works, she combines the tradition of the still life with the tromp l'oeil of the 17th century and counters the design-historical doctrine of “form follows function” with a fantastic world of things.
Paula Santomé, All Out Pixie Cut (detail), 2023, handmade aluminum embossing, apple tree wood. Courtesy the artist. Photo: Moritz Schermbach
Kathrin Sonntag, Dinge im Hintergrund #2, 2022, inkjet print, 110 x 73 cm. Courtesy the artist, Kadel Willborn, Düsseldorf