Mariateresa Sartori
World, Tell Me Everything
Transcription Exercises
Exhibition 29 September – 30 November
Exhibition opening and performance by Gustavo Frigerio
Friday 28 September 2018, from 6pm
© Mariateresa Sartori
fig tree, pinhole photography, monotype, 10 x 8 cm, Digne-les-Bains, 2018
The fall exhibition at the CAIRN Art Center is dedicated to Mariateresa Sartori’s latest work. For several years the Venetian artist has explored possible interactions between artistic and scientific languages. The starting point of her work is how we perceive the reality of things empirically, with our senses. In this exhibition, whose title comes from an extract by the poet Andrea Zanzotto, the artist investigates the human effort of ‘comprehension’ – from the Latin com- (with) –prehendo (take) – to integrate something in our own inwardness.
To assimilate this world that eludes us, one technique used by Mariateresa Sartori is pinhole photography. This is a basic device based on the principle of the camera obscura, which prints a precise, non-reproducible moment on photosensitive paper. The captured image is the sum of everything that happened during a certain time. Many variations are possible because during the exposure, the wind gets up, the clouds come by, the tilt of the light changes.
Classified under a display case according to the nomenclature assigned by botany, her pinhole photographs have been created at the art school photo laboratory in Digne-les-Bains, from leaves the artist collected during her walks scouting for objects. This series is presented with two others dealing with plants and clouds. Made by the artist during her residency at the Camargo foundation in Cassis, they question the tension between the desire to capture natural phenomena and their ephemeral and poetic aspect.
A second experimentation is built on sounds recorded by Mariateresa during some walks at the edge of the town. Soundtracks are broken up and transcribed as drawings, which create visual sequences that reference the mechanism of perception. The artist becomes the transcription tool from one language to another. This is also the case for the piece in which she translates figuratively the sound of the sea waves by catching their rhythm and the endless variations through drawing.
Using a direct and simple process, Mariateresa Sartori composes a visual score of physical phenomena. She seeks to read the landscape she has traversed and perceived with her senses at a given time. The confluency between the objective capture of a phenomenon and the perception of a moment in time is suggested by the video Vento SWS moderato 15/20. It catches the movement of trees at the point where the land touches the sky.
The exhibition continues at the Musée Gassendi where the video Le ragioni della scienza investigates the human proclivity for looking for associations between specific cases and general principles which are at the root of every great scientific theory.
For the projects created during her residency, the artist collaborated with Diana Moriconi, who is the head of the ‘jardin des cordeliers’ botanical garden in Digne-les-Bains and the ornithologist Robin Lhuillier.
Plus d’informations sur l’artiste : https://www.mariateresasartori.it/en/
Sidebar events
Friday, 28 September, 6pm
In a Flash Performance by Gustavo Frigerio
During the opening, the stage director and actor Gustavo Frigerio will perform In a Flash, conceived for the exhibition. It is a figurative transcription of the pulsating rhythms present in Sartori’s work, performed in the dark and transformed into a luminous dance.
Tuesday, 25 September, 6pm
Conference at IDBL, the Digne-les-Bains art school
The artist will present her work and the exhibition during a public lecture at the Digne-les-Bains art school.
Article about the exhibition in Artribune Magazine : (Italian)
« Natura site specific. Mariateresa Sartori al centro d’arte CAIRN »
Conversation between Mariateresa Sartori et Giulia Pagnetti : (French)
© Mariateresa Sartori, Tree chaffinch, pencil on paper, 10 x 10 cm, 2018.
©Mariateresa Sartori
Dog, pencil and graphite on paper, 10 x 10 cm, Digne-les-Bains, 2018.
« Cette opération a obtenu le label « Le musée sort de ses murs » décerné par le ministère de la Culture/Direction générale des patrimoines/Service des musées de France. Elle bénéficie à ce titre d’un soutien financier exceptionnel de l’État »