Sergio Sarra (Pescara 1961) is an Italian artist and former basketball player.
In 1985, at the age of 24, he retired from playing competitively in order to study at the School of Painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna, concluding in 1987. Sarra took part in the Biennial of Young Artists from Mediterranean EuropeBiennal of Young Artists from Mediterranean Europe (BJCEM).Maragall, Pasqual; Truñó, Enric; Dijan, Jean-Michel; et al. Biennal'87, exhibition catalogue. Barcelona: Ajuntament de Barcelona, p. 211. (Barcelona – 1987), Venice Biennale at the Corderie dell'Arsenale (1993) in Aperto '93,Aperto '93 Emergency/Emergenza, 45 International Art Exhibition: Punti cardinali dell'arte, La Biennale di Venezia, Corderie dell'Arsenale, Venice, June – October 1993. Project: Achille Bonito Oliva; Curators: Helena Kontova (Coordinator), Francesco Bonami, Nicolas Bourriaud, Antonio D'Avossa, Jeffrey Deitch, Mike Hubert, Thomas Locher, Kong Chang'an (Lauk'ung Chan), Robert Nickas, Rosma Scuteri, Berta Sichel, Matthew Slovoter, Benjamin Weil. Sarra created an environment consisting of a long wooden platform in chipboard (1266 x 211 x 30 cm) with three paintings on the walls featuring: Iguane (1993), Paesaggio (1993), Autoritratto (1993). at the Italian Pavilion (2011)Sarra exposed Pettino, planimetria di Contrada Selva, 2011, acrylic paint on board, 220 x 170 cm. and in the Havana BiennialLos últimos dibujos del siglo, curated by Zerynthia Associazione per l'Arte Contemporanea, Teatro Nacional de Cuba, Galleria René Portocarrero, 7 Havana Biennial, Universes in Universe, Havana, November 2000 – January 2001. (2000). Sarra curated the group exhibition Conversione di SauloConversione di Saulo, ideated by Vittoria Odescalchi, Palazzo Chigi Odescalchi, Rome, 21–23 September 2000. Artists invited at the exhibition: Stefano Arienti, Vanessa Beecroft, Jake and Dinos Chapman, Shay Frisch Peri, Avish Khebrehzadeh, Wolfgang Tillmans, Grazia Toderi, Jane and Louise Wilson, Francesca Woodman. at Palazzo Chigi Odescalchi (Rome – 2000) and exhibited at the Muzeul Naţional de Artă Contemporană (Bucharest – 2007) and the WAX Winkler Art Xperience (Budapest – 2007) in Altered States – Are you experienced?, group exhibition curated by Nicolas Bourriaud and Paolo Falcone, and at Baths of Diocletian (Rome – 2008) at Cose mai viste curated by Achille Bonito Oliva. In 2019, Sarra exhibited at 4th Festival del PaesaggioGiulia Ronchi, Ha aperto il Festival del Paesaggio 2019 a Capri e Anacapri. Le immagini dell'inaugurazione, 22 settembre 2019. in Anacapri.
Other group exhibitions at: Palazzo Rondanini alla Rotonda (Rome – 1989), Palazzo della Permanente (Milan – 1991) and Espace Pierre Cardin (Paris – 1992), 34 Spoleto Festival of 2Worlds (Fonti del Clitunno – 1991), Fondazione Orestiadi (Gibellina – 1992), Palazzo delle Esposizioni (Rome – 1992, 1995), Fondazione Volume! (Rome – 2000).
Sarra has held solo exhibitions at public and private institutions including the Faculty of Architecture of University of Palermo (1998), the Micromuseum for Contemporary Art and Culture (Palermo – 2004), Circolo Filologico Milanese (Milan – 2008), the Conservatory of Santa Cecilia (Rome – 2013), the Ewha Womans University (Seoul – 2016), the Benedictine Abbey of Propezzano (Morro d'Oro – 2018), Mattatoio Museo d'Arte Contemporanea (Rome - 2019).
From the beginning of his artistic career, Sarra worked almost exclusively with painting, drawing and sculpture. In 1997, the art critic and curator Lorenzo Benedetti wrote:Benedetti, Lorenzo. Il sacro di Fusi e il segno di Sarra, critique of the exhibition Segno Senso Suono Sacro: installazioni di Mario Airò – Federico Fusi – Sergio Sarra, curated by Zerynthia Associazione per l'Arte Contemporanea, Serre di Rapolano (Siena), Centro Civico per l'Arte Contemporanea La Grancia and Musei Senesi, May – June 1997.
Life and work
He played for the national youth teams, making his debut at sixteen in the Italian Series A basketball championship with the Fortitudo Bologna team.Alco Bologna – Team .
Upon completing his studies at the Accademia di Belle Arti di BolognaIn 1986, Sarra has collaborated in the realization of the Wall Drawing 462 by Sol LeWitt at Galleria Studio G7 in Bologna. (1987), Sarra then moved to Rome where he held his first solo exhibition at the Galleria Alice in 1990, presenting an installation consisting of four painted sheets of glass and crossed by white light from industrial neon tubes. Such works – being glass – on which Sarra drew symbolic and enigmatic figures, went on to become a constant in his work. In this sense, two solo exhibitions – Trinacria dreamSergio Sarra: Trinacria dream, MCO Arte Contemporânea, Porto, March – April 2007. (Porto – 2007) and un ambiente, sei vetriSergio Sarra: un ambiente, sei vetri, Rome, Conservatory of Santa Cecilia, May – June 2013. (Rome – 2013) – appear indicative. In occasion of the exhibition in Portugal, art critic Miguel Amado wrote:
Over the next few years, he produced a series of paintings on emulsified canvasThe surface treated with gel to render the surface photosensitive and permitting the reproduction of images on the canvas via a procedure similar to that of traditional photographic printing. Subsequently, the pictorial process thus becomes less detached. Sarra then painted the images reproduced in transparent red ink. Cf. Sergio Sarra (press release), Florence, Gentili arte contemporanea, January 1994. – PrimitiveCf. Urban, Carla (June 1991). "Sergio Sarra – Achille Bonito Oliva (L'arte fino al 2000 e Fuori Uso '91)". In Urban, Carla. TvDonna, TMC. Caruso, Rossella (January 1992). "Sergio Sarra: ateleta (press release)". Rome: Galleria Cecilia Nesbitt. Caruso, Rossella (January 1992). "ateleta". In Sergio Sarra: ateleta, video-catalogue, Rome: Galleria Cecilia Nesbitt Federici. – comprising zoomorphic figures that were almost always mirror images. The artist was invited to take part in the Aperto '93 Emergency/Emergenza - 45 Venice Biennale, where he created an environment consisting of a long wooden platformplatform-container, 1993, wood chipboard, 1266 x 211 x 30 cm. in chipboard with three paintings on the walls featuring: Iguane,Iguane. PaesaggioPaesaggio. and Autoritratto.Autoritratto. Clarity and essentiality become the dominant factors in his work.
In the paintings after 1997, the artist poses with his 'sign-drawing', being continuous and abstract, various elements – faces, zoomorphic groups, buildings with unknown geometries – that insist upon previous pictorial composition processes that are not entirely erased to reveal further combinatorial forms. Cf. Martino, Adriana (December–January 2000). "Sergio Sarra". Flash Art, no. 219, p. 123. Milan: Giancarlo Politi Editore. In Une correspondance sur les fantômes avec Sergio SarraEnglish translate: A correspondence on ghosts with Sergio Sarra. between Sarra e Nicolas Bourriaud in May 2007, the French critic and theorist wrote:
In 2000, in Rome, his works were exhibited at the Fondazione Volume!.Fondazione Volume! website. In the same year, Sarra curated at Palazzo Chigi Odescalchi the group exhibition Conversione di Saulo that was developed around the painting of the same name, painted in 1600 by Caravaggio. Also in 2000, Sarra married Elisabetta Ruscitti in Amalfi, with whom he lived for a short time in Naples. In 2001, their son Gerolamo Papik Merlino was born. It was in Naples that he produced Table Sculpture (table projection on 12 points),Sergio Sarra – Works, sergiosarra.it. a table/sculpture with a huge red Komodo dragon hooked underneath.
Over the same period, he produced the performance Life drawing no. 2, representing the connection between the manual creation and collective fruition – English version: "Anomalous Hotel", in Literature, sergiosarra.it. in which Sarra coerces the public's perceptive nature, using a strobe light to produce a decisive intermittence between darkness and light. This is the same direction in which Sarra heads when painting 'from real life' inside the WAX Kultúrgyár in Budapest and the Muzeul Naţional de Artă Contemporană in Bucharest for the exhibition Altered States – Are you Experienced?Altered States – Are you experienced?, Fuori Uso 2006, curated by Nicolas Bourriaud, Paolo Falcone, former COFA Pescara, December 2006 – February 2007 / WAX Winkler Art Xperience (former MEO), Budapest, May – June 2007 / Muzeul Naţional de Artă Contemporană (MNAC), Bucharest, June – August 2007 / Galeria Nouă, Bucharest, June – August 2007. (2006–2007). Between 2006 and 2009, Sarra worked on a series of paintings entitled Psichedelyc garden, in which he reiterates the same design, altering the chromatic impact each time.
In 2011, Sarra published perché la spiaggia si assottiglia dopo le Nàiadi,English translate: why the beach becomes narrower after the Naìadi. a book in which he collates a series of drawings and writings focused on the city of Pescara. In 2012, he designed Handrail for Cubist Films, inspired by Fernand Léger's 1924 film Ballet Mécanique, and the diptych Involuntary Commitment, which was exhibited at Galleria Cesare Manzo in Rome and at Fuori Uso 2012 in Pescara.
In June 2016, Sarra was invited to exhibit at the Ewha Womans University in Seoul, where he presented a series of drawings and paintings entitled iceberg rosaspina, accompanied by a short text written by the artist:
Traces of the theoretical processes underlying his works can be found in the short film My Painting Technique (2009, 2015). Critical review
Main readings
Bonito Oliva, Achille (1990). "L'arte fino al 2000 di Achille Bonito Oliva". In Argan, Giulio Carlo (ed.). L'Arte Moderna di Giulio Carlo Argan, volume attached to Corriere della Sera of 28 November 1990, Vol. 11. Milan: RCS Editoriale Quotidiani SpA.
D'Avossa Antonio (1993). "Vedute sul Mondo Reale". In Achille Bonito Oliva (curated by), "Punti cardinali dell'arte", catalog of the 45th International Exhibition of Art in Venice, Vol. I, Venice, Marsilio Editori S.P.A., 1993, , OCLC, OPAC IT\ICCU\RAV\0225285. D'Avossa, Antonio (1993). "La risposta, amico mio, sta soffiando nel vento – Lettera aperta a Pep Agut, Bigert & Bergström, Marco Brandizzi, Giorgio Cattani, Maria Eichhorn, Marcelo Expósito, Carsten Höller, Kirsten Mosher, Luca Quartana, Sergio Sarra e SubREAL". In Bonito Oliva, Achille; Kontova, Helena; Daney, Serge; et al. (eds.). Aperto '93: Emergency/Emergenza: Flash Art International, exhibition catalogue. Milan: Giancarlo Politi Editore. . OCLC 832241900. OPAC IT\ICCU\LO1\0323441. Caruso, Rossella; et al. (1993). "ateleta". In Bonito Oliva, Achille; Kontova, Helena; Daney, Serge (eds.). Aperto '93: Emergency/Emergenza: Flash Art International, exhibition catalogue. Milan: Giancarlo Politi Editore. . OCLC. OPAC IT\ICCU\LO1\0323441.
Sarra, Sergio (2000). "Conversione di Saulo", exhibition catalogue. Pescara: Edizioni Arte Nova. OCLC. OPAC IT\ICCU\TO0\0918995.
Curi, Umberto (2007). "Testo dedicato all'opera "Ipotesi di Biblioteca di Chimica dell'Università di Padova (LSD)" di Sergio Sarra". Special Project. In Bourriaud, Nicolas; Falcone, Paolo. Altered States – Are you experienced?,Library collocation of the Monograph – Centre G. Pompidou, Paris. exhibition catalogue. Pescara: Edizioni Arte Nova. OCLC. OPAC IT\ICCU\URB\0638550.
Marsala, Helga (2008). "Noisy Writings. Sergio Sarra's Aesthetics of Void". In Sergio Sarra : pearl fishermen, exhibition catalogue. Milan: Circolo Filologico Milanese. OCLC. OPAC IT\ICCU\RMS\2754024. Piccoli, Cloe (2011). "Town drawings". In Sergio Sarra, perché la spiaggia si assottiglia dopo le Nàiadi. Silvi (Teramo): Edizione Sarra Varano. . OCLC. OPAC IT\ICCU\TER\0036016. Curi, Umberto, La Pescara di Sergio Sarra, 13 December 2011.
Sarra, Sergio (2016). "Icebergs". In Sergio Sarra : excluding the things I chose to do, exhibition catalogue. Rome: Edizioni di Comunità. . OCLC 1124656885. OPAC IT\ICCU\BVE\0813805.