MARIATERESA SARTORI

Venice, 1961



AETHER/ETERE la presenza dell’assente

Galleria Michela Rizzo is pleased to present the exhibition AETHER/ETERE la presenza dell’assente on Giudecca Island in Venice from July 19 to September 28. This project is developed through the works of Mariateresa Sartori and David Rickard in a dialogue curated by Riccardo Greco.

AETHER/ETERE la presenza dell’assente brings together recent works of different mediums, including installations, prints, sounds, and drawings. These works explore the dichotomy between absence and presence, a concept that, in medieval times, was represented by the fifth element: aether.
Aether represented the matter that filled space and voids, an ephemeral material that was not visible but was always present. This ancient element becomes a metaphor for a quest for knowledge that leads to questions about present experiences and how we perceive them. Indeed, humanity has consistently probed questions that are often unanswered, thus changing our vision and what we believe.

The process of questioning is a common practice between the two artists. Rickard and Sartori are two true artist-researchers who delve into the world around them starting from the things that are often taken for granted, such as dust, wind or cosmic rays. Through elements which are imperceptible to everyday attention, the two artists have found ways to consider the aether, that is, the transformation and study of phenomena. Rickard and Sartori draw on empirical art practices and wholly interdisciplinary processes to explore this.
In the case of Rickard’s works there is a deep and curious study of scientific subjects such as physics, astronomy and meteorology, where what is typically unperceivable by humanity is processed to be felt and experienced. Indeed, Rickard’s works do not dwell on the surface, but delve into a more complex and researched narrative. The sky becomes a way of describing chance, the boundary between sensation, perception, and technology.
On the other hand, Mariateresa Sartori’s artwork production involves the realms of sound, language, poetry, natural phenomena. Like a contemporary shaman, she reaches out toward the impossible with a tension that turns out to be itself the primary subject of her works. She puts her tools at the disposal of chance and obtains a result, which by studying and observing she tries to understand and experience. Sartori tries to capture rainwater, to understand the wind, to describe time, to create micro and macro worlds, resulting in works that walk the fine line that divides serendipity and control.
The works in the exhibition become an instrument that vertically cuts through a phenomenon, a magnifying glass that observes space and its rules, becoming its spectator and helper at the same time.

AETHER/ETERE la presenza dell’assente, can be seen as a laboratory in which these two artists dialogue and question the substance of things. Answers are sometimes found, sometimes they are consciously unattainable, while at other times they respect the will of an unknown entity. Hosting this entity is the gallery, which becomes a liminal space for experimentation. Each room like a surrealistic place where the visitor is enveloped by an other-worldly atmosphere and a rhythm marked by the complexity of messages in transmission and portals between different knowledges, where all directions converge into the unknown.

Text by Riccardo Greco

Mariateresa Sartori was born in 1961 in Venice where she lives and works. She graduated in German studies with a thesis on Freud and the psychology of art.
Her research revolves around three thematic fulcrums: empirical scientific method; behavioural dynamics, often in relation to neurosciences; music and sound in relation to language. Since 1999 she has taught drawing to absolute beginners, applying the Betty Edwards method, Drawing with the Right Side of the Brain, based on the same neuroscientific presuppositions as her own artistic research. The tension between objective and subjective, between the uniqueness of events and general theory, nourishes all of her research which often makes use of the collaboration with experts from the various disciplines she explores: geologists, theoretical physicists, linguists, musicologists, musicians, singers, actors, botanists, ornithologists… The concrete data is empirically revealed and then analysed from perspectives which vary from work to work and which have different outcomes, from video to drawing, from pinhole photography to sound work. Constants and not exceptions, the universal and not the contingencies drive her research, which is aimed at a clearly unattainable objectivity. What is important to the artist is the tension towards objectivity and not its attainment, if it were even possible.

Among her solo exhibition:  Telling time. Roman Opalka Mariateresa Sartori, Fondazione Querini Stampalia, Venezia; Seguendo l’ordine del tempo, Galleria Doppelgaenger, Bari;  Monde dis moi tout, Exercices de trascription, Cairn Centre d’art, Digne les-Bains, France; Etude Op.25 N.10 in B minor. Homage to Chopin, Ikon Gallery, Tower Room, Birmingham; Per caso e per necessità. In dialogo con le collezioni Marsili e Monti, Museo di Palazzo Poggi, Bologna, invited by Angela Vettese, curator Lucia Corrain, Linea Katie Holten Mariateresa Sartori, New York, Bosi Contemporary, curated by  Kathy Battista; You are the music while the music lasts, Galleria Michela Rizzo, Venezia,  curated by  Raffaele gavarro; Omaggio a Chopin, Greenhouse at the Giardini Venice Biennale, curated by Paolo Rosso; Movimenti e situazioni, with Antoni Muntadas, Galleria Michela Rizzo, Venezia, curated by Marco Ferraris; Living is very dangerous, Palazzetto Tito, Bevilacqua La Masa, Venice,  invited by Angela Vettese; Seen from here, Careof,  Milan, curated by Angela Madesani.

Among the group shows: I see the music, Museo Chopin, Varsavia; Etude op.25 N.10 in B minor, Homage to Chopin, Ikon Gallery, Birmingham; Il tempo e le opere. Museo della grafica, Palazzo Lanfranchi, Pisa, curator Massimo Melotti;  Arte e Perturbante. Die Kunst und das Unheimliche, Museum of Modern Art,  Ascona, Switzerland, curator Viana Conti; My way, A modo mio. Ginevra Grigolo e lo Studio G7, 44 anni tra attualità e ricerca, Mambo Museum of Modern Art, Bologna; Extended Compositions, Kunsthaus Centre d’Art Pasquart, Biel/Bienne, Switzerland, curator Ellen Fellmann; The Human Condition. Don’t you think it’s time for love, MMOMA, Moscow Museum of Modern Art, curator Viktor Misiano; How to picture Living systems, KLI, An Institute for the Advanced Study of Natural Complex Systems, Klosterneuburg, Austria, curator Petra Maitz; Corpus. Anathomical Theater, Museum of the Russian Academy of Fine Arts, Saint Petersburg, Russia, curators Semyon Mikhailovsky, Ivan Govorkov; Alchimie Culturali, Opere nell’incontro tra impresa e arte, Palazzetto Tito, Bevilacqua La Masa, Venezia; The Sound of the Language, Elicotrema 2015, Punta della Dogana, Fondazione Pinault, Venice, curator Blauerhase; Now You Can Go, ICA, The showroom, Londra, curators Giulia Casalini and Laura Leuzzi; Proportio, Palazzo Fortuny, Venezia, curated by Daniela Ferretti e Axel Vervoordt; Movingimage, Contemporary Video Art Fair Waterfront New York Tunnel, New York,  invitation by Viktor Misiano , In other words – the black market of translation, Negotiating Contemporary Cultures, NGBK,  Kunstraum Kreuzberg/Bethanien, Berlin, curated by Elena Agudio, Paz Guevara, Giulia Piccini; Off Centre, Hangar Bicocca Foundation, Milan, curated by Chiara Bertola and Ra di Martino; XV Quadrennial of Rome, Energy, Folkwang Museum, Essen, curated by Hubertus Gassner; Projekt Artistst in residence, Graz, Austria, and Pittura Immedia,  Neue Galerie in Graz, curated by Peter Weibel, and at the Museum of Budapest Mucsarnocz;  XLV Venice Biennale; Design: Miroir du siècle, at the Grand Palais, Paris.