Giovanna SartiThe essence arises in vanishing

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 the Deutsche Bank Kunsthalle in Berlin. Giovanna Sarti is a non-representational painter. For her, painting is first of all an intensive engagement with the possibilities of the material; alongside pigment, ink, lacquer and charcoal she uses metal dust, and most recently she has been working in layers with rust. She first applies it to the canvas and then has it fixed before working the canvases in the studio with acrylic paints, Indian ink and/or lacquer. In the process it happens that the various painting media react chemically with one another. Such processes can be controlled only to a limited extent, and so the artist deliberately deploys the material’s own dynamic, for it is precisely such process-based working that plays an important role for her. The construction of the works in layers is, however, less a reference to external conditions than an analogy to existential psychological processes, since the layers of paint lie one upon another like memories. „The slow
daily layering of images, thoughts and feelings allows me to grasp my work as real and not as abstraction,“ says Giovanna Sarti. And like nature, memory or life, Giovanna Sarti’s works combine beauty with roughness. Even when the pictures glitter with metal dust or pink comes into play, they hold the tension as soon as the rust rages across the coarse linen as if in a great dance.

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