Santiago de Paoli, "Lieber Nebelkopf, die Blaue Brücke is open": Meyer Riegger, Berlin

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.
Take copper, for instance: the metal has been used as a painting support since the 16th century and evokes Christian iconography. And yet its materials carry no symbolic significance for de Paoli; his use of it comes down to other, more down-to-earth characteristics. Firstly, copper is easy for him to obtain. The artist has been based in Upstate New York for the past few years and can find the material at the local hardware store. Copper exudes warmth, reflects light, is inherently dynamic and changes colours. “The material responds in a way that is both magical and unexpected”, says de Paoli.

There is a painting by Oppenheim with the same title, Nebelkopf, from 1974. Out of delicate hatching, out of an almost nothingness of gray and white, emerges a form that simultaneously dissolves and takes shape: an enigmatic "something" - a fog head. It remains ambiguous whether this head is in the process of disappearing or manifesting, suspended as it is in a moment that could be read as either threat or revelation. Similarly, de Paoli's paintings, like membranes, allow for an endless ebb and flow between inner and outer realms, between zones, between waking and dream worlds, between the familiar, the alien and the utopian.

Hinges, as they appear in Coum in Butterfly & Worm, connecting the three felt panels, underscore the function of painting 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.

Alicja Schindler