Painting with Rust

Giovanna Sarti (born 1967 in Cervia, Italy, lives in Berlin) studied under Per Kirkeby at the Städelschule in Frankfurt. In 2013, she took part in the exhibition »Painting Forever« at Deutsche Bank Kunsthalle in Berlin. Giovanna Sarti is a nonfigurative painter. For her, painting is first of all an intensive examination of the possibilities of the material; besides pigment, ink, varnishes and coal she uses metal powders, and has recently began working in layers using rust. She initially applies it onto the canvas and then has it fixed before working the canvases at her studio using acrylic paints, ink and/or varnish. Occasionally the various paint mediums react chemically with one another. Such processes cannot entirely be controlled, and the artist is deliber­ately using the inherent dynamics of the ­material, because she places great importance to pre­cisely this processual way of working. Thus, the layered structure of her work is to be seen less in reference to external conditions but, rather, as an ­analogy to existential psychological processes, since the paint layers are ­superimposed, like memories. »The daily slow layering of images, thoughts and feelings allows me to ex­perience my work as real, and not as an abstraction«, says Giovanna Sarti. And as nature, ­memory, and life, ­Giovanna Sarti’s work combines beauty with roughness. Even when the images shimmer with metal dust, or even when the colour pink comes into play, as soon as rust rages across the rough linen of the canvas in a great big dance, they maintain the tension.

Exhibition:
Kunstverein Heilbronn, 24/9–20/11/2016