Double #2: Paula Santomé – Paradox / Kathrin Sonntag – Sobjects

For the second edition, curator Simone Neuenschwander has invited the two artists Paula Santomé (*1994, Spain, lives in Basel) and Kathrin Sonntag (*1981, Germany, lives in Berlin). The works of the two artists focus on the modalities of perception in our society. Using different 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 examines 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 restricted by housework and motherhood. The artist draws on references in literature and ancient mythologies to question traditional gender roles and their imprints. On hand-stamped aluminum reliefs, the artist shows various figures 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 loving as they are contradictory.

In her exhibition, Kathrin Sonntag focuses on 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, which are often presented in the context of installations, also 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.