Artemis ( Goddess) Stamno

Artemis ( Goddess) Stamno, 2023 Paloma Castello
From the series Gynaeceum
Hand painted ceramic
Height : 40 cm
Width : 30 cm
Opening Width: 26.2 cm
Base Width: : 20 cm

Gineco (Gynaecium)
Two of the recurring themes in Paloma Castello's work converge again in Gineceo (Gynaeceum): an exquisite femininity and her fascination with the ancient world. However, far from the exoticism of her previous forays, on this occasion the encounter takes place in the domestic and everyday. Hence, surely, her ceramic experimentation: nine central pieces dedicated to a peculiar group of divine women.

Conceptually, Paloma takes us inside the house. The portraits of her characters welcome us in the long corridor that leads to the women's room, the gynaikôn, from which this exhibition takes its name. Although the women are absent, their presence is manifested by the ceramic types that best represent them. We find amphoras, hydriai, kraters, a psykter (consecrated to Artemis) and a very special oinochoe (with the face of Calypso). Specialists have failed to agree on whether any essentially feminine ceramic utensils existed in the ancient world; however, all of the above were linked in a particular way to women, who were in charge of collecting water, were providers and caregivers, and in their dark interiors created and preserved life. Although women were often the protagonists in the decoration of these vessels, their perspective was completely absent; they were always represented in terms of a man, as daughters, wives, mothers, or widows. In Castello’s gynoecium, however, their faces, separated from their stories, have been placed at the center. This gynoecium celebrates a horizontal coexistence between the Olympian goddesses Artemis and Hera and the agrarian Ceres, the wild nymphs, the city-dwelling Hestia, and the fatal Calypso and Circe. Therefore, although the style of the ancient ceramic pieces is a reliable mechanism for their periodization, Castello’s women, newly immortalized in her vibrant vitrified painting, join together in an anachronistic continuum. The chromatic transfer is exquisite and surprising; in this show, the typical contrast between the red figures and the black ceramic in the materiality is carried out through the use of strong colors and silkscreen drawings. Paloma also avoids the cliché of placing femininity in the bathroom; there are no lekythos, alabastrons, or aryballos (containers for perfumes or ointments) here.

Certainly, Paloma's Neoclassical is sober, measured, stylized, silent in its stridency. There are no crowd scenes, prolific decorations, or naturalist portrayals. Only a woman. White, red, black, and silver profiles emphasize the character’s features. Eclecticism that is chromatic, iconographic (ceramic, sculptural, numismatic), and even cultural (Greek and Roman) constructs a feminine gaze, outstandingly elegant, classical in the simplicity of its forms, neoclassical precisely in that it is through the eyes of women that the scene in this very particular gynaecium is revealed.