Pola Sieverding | Contact Zone
Pola Sieverding, touche-touche #4, 2023, Pigment print on paper, 24 x 16 inches (61 x 41 cm), Edition of 5. © Pola Sieverding; Courtesy of the artist and signs and symbols, New York.
Writer: Emily Ranieri
Photo editor: Athena Abdien
Copy editor: Kee’nan Haggen
In her first solo exhibition in the United States, German artist Pola Sieverding explores the sense of touch through her show Contact Zone at signs and symbols gallery from May 4 to June 10. Amidst the fear of contact during the recent COVID-19 pandemic, Sieverding became increasingly fascinated with the intimacy of touch, its essentiality to human survival, and its dynamic and receptive ability. The spirited installation features large-format photographic prints on a textured gauze, which calls for the viewer to consider the skin as a gauze-like material on the human body, both absorbent in nature. As the largest organ, the skin acts as an individual’s protective barrier while allowing tactile exploration of the world around them.
Pola Sieverding, Contact Zone, 2023, Print on gauze, each 118 x 59 inches (300 x 150 cm). © Pola Sieverding; Courtesy of the artist and signs and symbols, New York.
Sieverding works primarily in lens-based media, using photography, video, and sound to define and traverse the human body. Through her images, she demonstrates her interest in the body’s ability to perform as a mode of expression and communication. Contact Zone likens human skin to a transferable material, as represented in the images printed on gauze. The large-format prints are suspended from the gallery ceiling and give viewers a different perspective from any position; the gauze appears opaque or transparent depending on their vantage points and how the light moves through it, emphasizing the skin’s simultaneous fragility and durability.
Pola Sieverding, touche-touche #7, 2023, Pigment print on paper, 24 x 16 inches (61 x 41 cm), Edition of 5. © Pola Sieverding; Courtesy of the artist and signs and symbols, New York.
The series features close-ups of the skin, allowing it to fill the composition, equating the skin to an artistic canvas. Like gauze, the skin shows texture – the veins, creases, and raised surfaces remind the viewer of its distinct materiality and ability to invite the giving and receiving of touch to form a connection. The image of the spine’s raised vertebrae is specifically striking; the skin surrounding the spine is also raised, giving the entire composition texture and drawing material parallels to the gauze the image is printed on.
Pola Sieverding, touche-touche #1, 2023, Pigment print on paper, 24 x 16 inches (61 x 41 cm), Edition of 5. © Pola Sieverding; Courtesy of the artist and signs and symbols, New York.
The images of arms and hands interlocked and woven together connect to Sieverding’s enchantment with the intimacy of touch, especially that of two people. Against a black background, the viewer is invited to examine the two hands and arms intently, observing how the human skin interacts and communicates through touch. The idea of texture and materiality is also explored in these images, specifically the photo of the two individuals grasping each other’s arms, creating a diagonal across the composition. The visible veins on the arm in the foreground remind of the skin’s likening to the gauze's texture.
Pola Sieverding, Contact Zone, 2023, Print on gauze, each 118 x 59 inches (300 x 150 cm). © Pola Sieverding; Courtesy of the artist and signs and symbols, New York.
Sieverding’s Contact Zone viscerally investigates the sense of touch and its ability to act as a vessel for connection. The exhibition prompts viewers to think about physical communication in a post-pandemic world and how their bodies can become a space for intimacy. The images demonstrate both primality and ardor, emphasizing the duality of the skin as a canvas and how that duality is paralleled through the gauze canvas.
