I’ve been to many studios over the years, and some places are hard to shake. I'm not talking about the layout, setup, or the physicality of the space, but the creative spark and the general vibe in the air. And I certainly felt this when I visited Kottie Paloma’s workshop in Vienna last weekend.
Having settled in Austria via Berlin and NYC, Paloma has carried his rich life experience and art journey along with him. Growing up in suburban California and spending his formative years in San Francisco left a mark on his approach, attitude, and how he does and handles things. The drawings, DIY monotypes, sculptures on custom-built pedestals, and a series of exclusively monochromatic, mostly large-scale paintings all feature a human figure, equally imposing and vulnerable, majestic yet odd and clumsy. But while their appearance suggests a certain narrative and perhaps implies an atmosphere, they’re actually used as a visual form, an element that can be positioned or arranged so it forms the right structure within the painting. And this wasn’t by accident, as Paloma arrived at these figures from abstractions in which an occasional face or limb would appear, eventually fully overtaking his practice.
Regularly placed on a horizon, in groups or alone, the figures became the main motif, subject matter, and his alphabet. Equally prehistoric and ancient as they are raw and timeless, they are a way of exploring an inexhaustible subject that is the human condition, while presenting a valid excuse to continuously paint and create. Not a thought-through, preconceived image, but a humanly imperfect, emotionally charged, immediate creative outburst. Marked w simplified forms and exaggerated or incorrect proportions, they tend to appear and dissolve within gestured passages, becoming part of a probable narrative and a way to convey a sense of depth or perspective. Their vulnerability is underlined w the shaky, almost sketch-like line work, a distinctive quality which Paloma explores by bringing them into equally raw, texture-rich 3-D form. —Saša Bogojev
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