DEPARTMENT, PAUL SOTO, NEW YORK, NY, 2026

“NOTES ON SOPHIE FRIEDMAN-PAPPAS’S DEPARTMENT”
TEXT BY DOMINIC COLES:

2. The coil’s design and production outlines but one of the alchemical processes initiated by industrialization. As metals merged in high temperature furnaces, companies and trusts consolidated into monopolies: the elemental and chemical transformations of the material seemed to take place at the level of business’ organization. And as matter, manufacture, and monopoly took shape, so too did the nature of the subject regulating these emergent forms: in parallel, the Industrialist set about fashioning their own singular-self. This would necessarily be a Mr. Subject-InControl, an “I [that] insists it is not the Other, not the world… [which] is of course the home terrain of the Classical Modern Subject.” The Industrialist would offer their own subjectivity as a 1 form of solidity in a changing, bending, twisting world – within the contours of the flexible, mutable alloy we could locate the unwavering rigidity of the Industrialist as character. But of course, this subjectivity was the result of storytelling magic, which is to say: a mediapolitical mouthpiece bought to conceal the fact that the Industrialist produced little to no value. The value therein was the product of the collective labor of the workers. In this sense, the Industrialist’s narrative of individuation was an operation within capital’s perceptual physics: a distortion between the actual and apparent source of value in which the Industrialist posited themself as its source. This narrative offering generated a further transformation: the subjectivity 2 of the Industrialist would be – in the eyes of the public – completely obliterated. Absorbed into 3 the form of the firm, the Industrialist is a building, a bond, a brick. Let’s call this character FRICK.

3. The coil traces an oscillation wherein the subject is dissolved, reformed, and dissolved again. In Department, the kiln is an instrument of this oscillation, a means for moving between various states of transposition: matter goes in one way and comes out another. What Department prods us to consider is the nature of the Artist’s individuation as it relates to the form of the Industrialist; the kiln is an instrument of individuation and industry as much as it is one for art-production. Like the Industrialist, the Artist works with the diffusion and dissolution of material and matter. And just like the Industrialist, they frequently offer a uniquely fashioned, singular-self on the other side of these transformations: a character, in part, designed to conceal the collective contributions that produce the work so as to secure their unique position in the market. Imagine the Artist who is obsessed with: their forms, their materials, their process, to name but a few of their various holdings. In Department, Sophie is searching for an oscillation – think: dissolving, reforming, obliterating, reconstituting – that produces a subjectivity that resembles the Industrialist a bit less. What other positions might we inhabit that do not rearticulate its form?

4. To do this, Sophie takes a cue from FRICK and fashions the character of “ARTIST” – one who is frantically searching for a means by which to reproduce and secure their identity. Let’s call this character REMBRANDT. REMBRANDT is aware that the kiln puts significant pressure on his agency, as in: who made the work? Artist or kiln? And he responds by frantically manufacturing and inserting coils made from a high-refractory material – designed to avoid the compositional shift catalyzed by extreme temperatures – into the kiln’s body. This is one way of retaining the artist’s touch, of 4 rearticulating his specific form of individuation: the coil’s components will remain unchanged despite the kiln’s fluctuations in temperature and, as such, the artist’s subjectivity remains intact. The continuity of REMBRANDT’S hand is sustained; the Artist, like the Industrialist, breeds more of himself. The satire of this situation is that the coils were still transformed! For all their marketing and purported stress-testing, the coils collapsed under extreme heat: it is the first of REMBRANDT’S humiliations from and submissions to the realities of the firing process. The next corresponds to the kilns themselves: if the coils have failed, at least his touch remains in the form of the kiln which he also fabricated. Hilariously: the kilns explode, they overflow with material, their outsides appear inflamed by the heat they were designed to contain, control, and regulate. REMBRANDT attempts to project himself into the material, to be absorbed into the form of kiln and coil, but he is unable. Why? REMBRANDT looks across the room: to his horror, he sees his self-portrait scattered across a wall – cut up into a series of haphazard squares and pasted freely. As the light hits the torn canvas, his eyes fall out of focus. “It must be the shock,” he thinks. The contours of his face blurring in the image, he catches the play of light on the thick, glossy applications of paint. There isn’t any of him to see. He looks closer at the brushstrokes. THE ARTIST’S materials are something other: they have a topography of their own – a form, a force, a way of moving. What Department suggests is that working with a material, in collaboration with it, comes with a responsibility, one that becomes something like a minimum case: which is to say – the material requires this at least when approached, listened to – when it is understood to be more than form-executing filler or a synecdoche for the artist’s self (ego). As such: Department articulates, with incredible humor, something like an ethics of materiality. In response to THE ARTIST’S frantic attempts at reconstituting identity, these materials move away. The artist must follow their lead. In the material – its topography, its history – and in the technical operation of 5 the artist’s various tools, is the possibility of an explosion that entirely reorders subjectivity. One that: “draw[s] the outlines of a subject-position that can authentically conceive of its own problem status… which would be a rhetorical shift along the lines of saying that the work of “experimentation” remains crucial, but is no longer understood as oriented toward a solution, and instead toward a fundamental recognition of the crisis of oneself as or in the world.”

5. Consider a metal coil as it turns in your hands.

What does it feel like? Are its ends sharp or filed? What is its temperature? Is it flexible? What does it remind you of? Where did you buy the coil? Have you been to this store before? Do you know who they purchased it from What does it feel like? Are its ends sharp or filed? What is its temperature? Is it flexible? What does it remind you of? Where did you buy the coil? Have you been to this store before? Do you know who they purchased it from? Or: did you fabricate it? What was the source of its metal? Has this coil been used before? What for? And what will you use it for now?

HE’S FINISHED 1, GRAPHITE, OIL PAINT, AND KNEADED ERASER ON PAPER, 2025-2026

HE’S FINISHED 2, GRAPHITE, OIL PAINT, AND KNEADED ERASER ON PAPER, 2025-2026

HE’S FINISHED 3, GRAPHITE, OIL PAINT, AND KNEADED ERASER ON PAPER, 2025-2026

UNTITLED ENERGY, MAK CENTER FOR ART AND ARCHITECTURE, LOS ANGELES, CA 2025

I’M FINISHED, GRAPHITE, OIL PAINT, AND COLORED PENCIL ON PAPER, 2025

YOU’RE FINISHED, GRAPHITE, OIL PAINT, AND PASTEL ON KOZO PAPER, 2025

WE‘RE FINISHED, GRAPHITE, OIL PAINT, AND COLORED PENCIL ON KOZO PAPER, 2025

I’M FINISHED, YOUR FINISHED, WE’RE FINISHED, 2025
VIDEO BY ANNA JERMOLAEWA

INTO THE WIND, 2020
VIDEO AND WALL SCULPTURE BY ANNA JERMOLAEWA

THE CEREMONY, PAUL SOTO, NEW YORK, NY 2025

KILN BUILDING 5, SELF-GLAZED KILN AND MIXED MEDIA, 2025

KILN BUILDING 4, SELF-GLAZED KILN AND MIXED MEDIA, 2025
PAINTINGS BY JACOB MASON-MACKLIN AND GRACE ROSARIO

SCUPPER, FRANCIOS GHEBALY, LOS ANGELES, CA 2024

DELTILLE-D WALL’S NECESSARY ANACHRONISM 2, INVERTED CAMERA OBSCURA (HOMEMADE PROJECTOR), MIXED MEDIA, 2023
LINK TO PROJECTED TEXT