Paloma Varga Weisz: Root of a Dream

Published on the occasion of the first major retrospective in an Italian institution dedicated to German artist Paloma Varga Weisz-at Castello di Rivoli Museo d'Arte Contemporanea from October 2015 to January 2016-the catalog represents an important opportunity to analyze her work, thanks to scholarly essays by Marianna Vecellio, Jarrett Gregory, and Alessandro Rabottini, accompanied by a vast selection of exhibition views. By means of a distinctive iconography that combines references to Italian and German Renaissance art, psychoanalysis, private recollections, and an underlying fascination with the human (especially female) body, this artist creates complex and poetic installations that lead the spectator into a contemplative mode of viewing, poised between dream and reality. Based on a poem by Paul Celan, Root of a Dream reveals Varga Weisz's constant attention to the relationship between memory, erasure, and the re-surfacing of recollections.