Blue Room
Paloma Varga Weisz
Sophie von Hellermann
MASSIMODECARLO is pleased to present Condition I-VI and Blue Room, two distinct yet interwoven exhibitions by Paloma Varga Weisz and Sophie von Hellermann, marking Varga Weisz’s first solo presentation in Hong Kong and the first-ever collaboration between the two artists. Conceived as parallel acts within a single narrative, the exhibitions unfold across adjoining rooms: one introspective and sculptural, the other theatrical and immersive.
The second room, the Blue Room, is a complete reversal. Here, Varga Weisz invites Sophie von Hellermann to transform the gallery into a painterly reverie. They’ve never collaborated before, though their artistic friendship spans decades - first as students orbiting each other in Düsseldorf, then reconnected through shared friends and parallel paths across London and beyond.
Von Hellermann paints directly onto the gallery walls in watery shades of blue - a colour both artists love - evoking imagined lives and scenes from an old Hong Kong flat with a harbour view. A kind of dream-salon begins to take shape: family portraits, surreal landscapes, fragments of myth. The mural functions like painted wallpaper, though nothing is repeated, and everything is alive.
At the centre of this fictional room stands one of Varga Weisz’s marionettes, clad in a tartan skirt found in Hong Kong. Part puppet, part collector, part spectre of colonial residue, it anchors the room like a character in a story that’s still being written. Around it, von Hellermann’s paintings, Varga Weisz’s sculptures - including her Cabinet - and small details that reward close attention.
Together, their works share a kind of soft theatricality, weightless but grounded, playful but serious. The figures shift, the room breathes, the fantasy never fully resolves. But in this dense, mysterious setting, what emerges is a shared language - one rooted not in similarity, but in deep understanding.
If Condition I-VI is about intimacy and raw immortalisation, Blue Room is all maximalist imagination. Together, the two rooms form a complete universe, inviting viewers to step outside of fixed categories and wander, instead, through stories, impressions, and slight shifts.
Also on view
Also on view