Valentina Sartori

VALENTINA SARTORI

sartoriberlin@gmail.com

PROJECTS

With Re-Guards
I conduced an art mediation's workshop by the “Satelliten Projekte” of the 6th Berlin Biennale 2010 together with eight of the exhibition's guards. The presence of young artists as guards by a big-event group-show brought me to develop a sensorial training session, many survival theatrical instruments and a big conceptual exit door from the nightmare situation. The workshop series let them rethinking about roles, perception, creation and emergency. The long time observation determined a new critic perspective about contemporary art; the commentary logic supported the unauthorized speakers of the institution to aim a personal answer, in form of artwork self. Supported by University of Art, Berlin- Institute for art in context; KW – Institute for contemporary art and Berlin Biennale.
Guestbook – “mind-mapping the rest of now”
With the artists group OAS - Open Anonymous Society, I took part at the short-term interventions platform “Tabularasa” by the biennale Manifesta 7 “The rest of now” in Italy, 2008. Related to my personal history, the restored venue hosted the exhibition but had hosted also 30 of my grandpa's years as simple workers by the former aluminium factory. We related the enormous fluxes of times, people, point's views and rivers to our condition of artists in that context and we did a living guestbook. Sitting inside a really long narrow room around a really long narrow table, at the end of the show's route, we offered water, and a place to rest. Some of the visitors told with us, in an informal performativity level. After their departures we translated some sentences or reflections about the big-event and wrote them on al rally long narrow paper sheet on the table. The used glasses marked the passage of hundreds of visitors.
FAMILIENPORTRAET (Family portraits) 2015
www.familienportraet.net
From the flyer: “The origins of the family portraits derive from the Italian 15th century Renaissance, as elite representation of the own circle or as tribute to the sacred family. Valentina Sartori is an Italian artist who draws her own and other families, in order to trace the unicity and the peculiarity in every of them. Through her conceptual guidance she supports the own choice on forms, motives, compositions and meanings. Who belongs to a family? How much time do you dedicate to the common creation? In two/three workshop sessions will emerge a large-scale painting, showing your perception about your family. The end product is painting on paper or a reduced photographic version, at one's own option. Please contact her under sartoriberlin@gmail.com”
Viaggio Italiano (Italian Journey)
The photo book “Viaggio Italiano” (Italian Journey) is composed by 28 digital photographs, that I have realized during 2003 and 2004 in different places worldwide. I over-painted and re-elaborated the pictures with the help of an Italian children's group, aged 3 to 10 years. I have given them different travel photographs and asked them to find a title and subtitle for the photos. The children could select one or several photos and edit them with drawings and writings, prolonging in that way mine and their imaginary journey. Edition of 15 Books, 33 Pages, 20X20 cm, signed, 2005. The project was realized through the financial support of the Autonomy Province of Bozen (I), 2003.
Come to visit Jouvana
The imaginary host Jouvana invited many different social groups to a tight series of inaugurations of the same exhibition. Eight journey pictures were presented on tables and recreated an unofficial discussion situation. The debate was not verbal but in a written or drawn form on the pictures. The five groups (German, Italian, children, VIPs, neighbourhood) communicated on the same platform without a specific language or social boundaries. The experience was repeated three time in a public space (Wallenstein Platz, Vienna), in an half public space (ZO, Bologna, I) and in a private space (Galerie Goethe2, Bozen, I). Eight photographs mounted on wood panels 70X70 cm, pvc transparent panels, pencils and draw materials. 2005-2007.The project was realized through the financial support of the Autonomy Province of Bozen (I), 2005.
Media As A Medium
For the international exchange program and residency Media as a Medium I realize the " Re- $ " making macro photography of architectures extracted from international banknotes. Bearers of the official image of a country, the bills are one of the most used everyday objects. Everyone considers the bill a personal possession, however, continually mistaking with other goods. The images of banknotes are drawings, interpretations of places and historical moments. These interpretations have been the basis of a visual dialogue between the Pakistani artists Javed Mehr Ali Murtaza and me. In a continuous return of images, elaborated through drawing, scanned and sent back, we stressed the abstractness of media images on the bills, reflecting about cultural stereotypes and the possibility of communication without the use of words.
The bad, the Good and the Ugly
In 2009 I was invited from Museion, Museum of Modern Art in Bozen (I) to intervene on the exhibition “New Entries”. The intent was to establish a dialogue between local artists and the new artworks, which had been recently acquired into the permanent collection. Even in this case I was asked for en intervention of artistic art mediation. I choose the photography " The poor visit the rich and the rich visit the poor " by Elke Krystufek, through which I developed a workshop for ten young (female) students of the Italian and German art schools of Bozen. The theme of the workshop was the identity and the self-portrait. A room of the Museion has been covered with white paper and became for two days the projection surface of the whole experiences of the workshop. Through the medium of photography I extrapolated later a sequence of images from their processes. This shots became a stop motion video, displayed together with the art work of Elke Krystufek . In October 2009 a version of the video has been projected on the media façade of Museion.

BIO

Italian visual artist based in Berlin, Germany.
She works with different media.

Drawing - reflecting on her personal skin and her environment.
Photography - registering with ecstatic gaze what it is already sublime available.
Installation - works in and with the context.
Art mediation - related to her own or to other artist´s work.

Participative projects with adults and children.

“In all my artworks, whether drawing , sculpture or photography, I firmly retain some characteristics : a tight relation to the human body , the saturation of the image by colours and present elements; the visionary gaze, the so called ecstatic look; the participation of the audience and the tendency to wipe out the artistic genres boundaries.”

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WORKS

Habitat
Series of three large-size pictures, realized during a long travel in Morocco in 2003. Intimate scenarios and instable vintage monuments characterize the pictures. The warm fascinating compositions invite to get in crashed habitats, suspending for a short (perception) time, some prejudices regarding the ugly or the strange. 190x125 cm. Lamdaprint on Aludibond. Edition of 1 in that size. The artwork was realized through the financial support of the Autonomy Province of Bozen (I), 2003.
Travel Agency
Beautiful globetrotter pictures; on offer some displaced blinks. Full of colour, stuff, life, never ended, the pics are cut out from daily revelations. Series of 135 Pictures mounted as advertising Billboards on two construction plasterboards, 220X50 cm. Available also as single trips for groups or individuals. It does no matter where, but how.
Village
A village is composed by the usual market squares + religious spot + civil presence. All abstract phantoms. Still as a statue, in silence as a tomb, my perception recorded the presence of anyone passing over there. Any one = the breathing real village. Series of eight pictures on velvet paper 20X30 cm. Edition of 5. The artwork was realized through the financial support of the Autonomy Province of Bozen (I), 2003.
Brücken (Bridges)
Photographic series of 15 inkjet images printed on 40 years old yellowed paper, found in my grandpa basement. The shot location was the deserted aluminium factory near the restored one, gentrified for the biennale Manifesta7 “The rest of now” in Italy I 2008. I took part at the biennale, but I was not allowed to enter in my grandpa former work site. The rest there consisted in a vibrant repulsion and the unreal beck side of the big exhibition of my life.
Berliner Blaue Beispiele
The capital city reloaded in blue. In a limbo of water pipes and unexpected sun or snow beams, unprepared from the north-west wind, my very first time here. The youngest and oldest on a square kilometre of sandy flatland. Series of eight pictures 30X30 cm on transparent acetate sheets, unframed.
The Cultural Boat
A very simple installation realized on the island of Hydra, Greece, by the Residence "Hydra 2000" for young artists . A yellow fishing net rolled up like a rope, climbed the steep white stairs until a small public terrace on the harbour. The rope formed there a spiral. Many fragments of decorated pottery, old or new, collected on the beach, remained attached at the yellow spiral. The cultural boat ran aground on the mountain, with its unexpected and sharp load.
Sanctuary
Sanctuary is an installation that was born by a death accident: in a park on the Bologna (I) hills, I found a tree that had fallen after a strong storm and because of its precarious position on the floor. His roots were uprooted and he could not live long: so I decided to bring this tree for his first time at see. I transported the tree to the Adriatic Sea and I worked on him directly on the beach, with the enthusiastic support of the locals. The tree was cut down into three parts: the trunk (the stoup), the branches (the dome) and a lot of round wood slices (the ground) . The three parts of the installation have been installed in a triangle whose centre should have been the cross of three sandy paths. This last part of the installation (the path) could not be realized because of a municipality prohibition.
Soundsäulen (The sound columns)
2009-2011 I produced a wood-sound installation for the foundation “August Bier” in Fürstenwalde (80 Km east Berlin). The history of the man and the place are strong connected each other and I choose two imposing trunks to be modelled in form of empty bodies: the negative shape of a man and a (pregnant) woman are visible inside the trunks. An audio guide, also developed with a group of artists, drives the visitors through the forest, through the four artworks and the 11 sound stations. The acoustic part of mine: http://goo.gl/j5c1Zh