LISA SARTORIO
The artworks
Series The Writing of History
Bren –Mk1, Luger, M14-Ebr
2015
116 x 92,5 cm
Pigments ink printing on Arman Smooth Coton paper
Ed. of 1/3
Courtesy Galerie Binôme, Paris
For a number of years, Lisa Sartorio has put her camera aside. In light of the glut of images, she no longer sees the need to produce new ones. Her work questions the paradox surrounding the hyper-reproducibility of images causing the content and the meaning of what we see to be overlooked. The series L’écrit de l’histoire / The Writing of History is produced from photographs of war weapons from the Internet that have played a major role in world conflicts. The obsessive multiplication of each of these arms gives shape to simulated landscapes. Attractive from a distance, more closely they reflect the vertiginous scale of invasions and the shock of the state of decay of landscapes ravaged by war. Far from focusing on a feudal vision of the land and its relationship with the powers that be, L’écrit de l’histoire/The Writing of History is about compositions that take shape from within, in the relationship that each firearm module builds with its replica. Living shapes that are displayed exponentially and paradoxically, depicting creative energy and deceptive infiltration, sculpt physical and mental contamination. They represent the absurdity of a world contemplating its self-destruction. By using pre-existing images shared by everyone as a basis for creation, Lisa Sartorio falls within the movement of appropriation and shakes up our passive gaze by creating ambiguity regarding genre. Like M14-EBR, from the wheat field to the battlefield, she swings between photography and drawing, contemplated and documented landscape. These hybrid images highlight their power of suggestion. They represent our presence in the world more than the conflicts in a process that re-awakens minds
The artist
Lisa Sartorio, Italian-born, graduated from the beaux-arts in Paris in 1993 and attended the Institut des hautes études en arts plastiques de la Ville de Paris (Institute of advanced studies in fine arts of the City of Paris) in 1994. Trained in sculpture, her work then evolved to performance and visual arts. She received various prizes and scholarships including Aide à la création Ville de Paris (City of Paris aid for creation), Bourse d’étude Corée du Sud (South Korea scholarship), Artiste en résidence Valence Art 3 (Art 3 Artist in residence – Valencia), Winchester scholarship, Prix de la Fondation de l’Ensba Paris (Ensba Paris Foundation Award) and is currently in territorial residence subsidised by the Ministry of Culture with the Mac/ Val at Vitry. Her personal exhibitions in museums and art centres include: Kunsthaus in Nuremberg, Museum of fine arts in Valencia, Maison d’art contemporain Chailloux (House of contemporary art in Chailloux), Palais de Chaillot, Musée d’Art Moderne/Palais de Tokyo (Museum of Modern Art/Palais de Tokyo), 19 CRAC de Montbéliard. As an artist attached to the national scene of Cavaillon from 2002 to 2008, she taught image construction and semiotics at the Greta from 2007 to 2010. In 2010, she took part in the Nuit Blanche Parisienne (Paris all-night event) and collaborated on an artistic project with Arte in 2011. Her work was also presented at the FIAC, Slick Art fair and Art Paris. Her creation of video projects has also driven by an association with La Maison du Geste et de l’Image for several years now. Her works are in many public and private collections: Musée des Beaux-arts de Valence, Musée des Beaux-arts de Paris, Arthothèque de Lyon, BNF, Collection Jacques et Evelyne Deret (Paris), Collection Laurent Savard (Lausanne). By 2015, she presented the monographic exhibition “Il était (X) fois” at the Galerie Binôme and took part in the collective exhibition “Créer c’est résister” (Creating means resisting) at the Lyon library in the framework of Résonance, Lyon Biennale 2015, accompanied by a conference led by Michel Poivert. In 2016, with her “Dessin d’un tirage” series, she is taking part in the drawing exhibition, presented at the Art Paris Art Fair and Galerie Binôme. She is presenting her work to the Maison Européenne de la Photographie during a conference programmed by Gens D’images, etc. Lisa Sartorio is one of those artists who are interested in photography by giving a critical view of the massive presence of images and their absolute availability in today’s visual culture. Internet, social networks and video surveillance play a role in producing new creative processes that are proof of a new transformation of images. Lisa Sartorio seizes this to create visual experiences that disrupt the relationship of an image with its ubiquitous appearance; Her work questions the visibility of reality and what is built in its appearance and disappearance.