Steve sabella

Steve Sabella
6.5.2010 | 17.7.2010

Steve Sabella
arty, print, Moglia

metroquadro
via Capra 2/E ­ 10098 Rivoli (TO) tel. +39 335 6227347 tel. +39 328 4820897 www.metroquadroarte.com ­ info@metroquadroarte.com

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In Exile

Steve Sabella
In Exile

Steve Sabella ­ In Exile
A conversation with the artist
by Sara Rossino
The first time you find yourself in front of theartworks which make up the In Exile series by Steve Sabella, you have a strange feeling of familiarity. Not with regards to the places which are featured in the images, fragments of a subjective reality which is alien to the viewer, details of the everyday London life which the artist has been living with his family for the past three years since he left the Old City of Jerusalem. These shards ofcaptured memories, deconstructed and reconstructed, are intimate to Sabella because they belong to his daily dimension, but are distant from the spectator, lacking a familiar or recognizable reference, extracted from an anonymous anywhere. In Sabella’s compositions you find yourself facing a reconstructed personal reality which maintains only a fragile referential link to the recognizable world, butwhich slips towards an invisible, mental dimension. States of Mind is the definition which the artist has given to these artworks. The ‘state of mind’ is what appears to be familiar when facing these images, bringing them nearer to the individual experiences of each one of us, or at least to those of us who are pierced to the core of the consciousness of existence. The fragmentation, dislocation andconfusion which make up the essential components of In Exile are the conditions which characterize our relationship, as contemporary individuals, with the world both within and outside of us. That is why, when seeing Sabella’s works for the first time, the spectators, more or less consciously, recognize a condition which they already know. The dizziness which one experience in front of theartist’s fragmented and reconstructed reality, the difficulty in pinpointing the starting or finishing point in the labyrinth of shards in In Exile, these are feelings which the individual could experience when relating to reality, with its variety and multiplicity without any limits, supports or ties. The liquid modernity, as defined by the sociologist Zygmunt Bauman, in which we are immersed, makes up acontinuum of places, images, life fragments, faces and voices which often hinder our comprehension ­ with the original meaning of cum prehendere, to take with you, to keep, to grasp ­ which collides with our individual reality at a speed which is too fast to be “human” and is, in fact, in a liquid form, lacking the necessary solidity which would allow it to be grasped and kept, and thereforeSteve Sabella ­ In Exile
Conversazione con l’artista
di Sara Rossino
Trovandosi di fronte alle opere della serie In exile di Steve Sabella per la prima volta, si può stranamente avvertire un senso di familiarità. Non nei confronti dei luoghi che compaiono nelle immagini, frammenti di una realtà soggettiva estranea a chi le guarda, dettagli della quotidianità londinese che l’artista vive da ormaitre anni con la sua famiglia, da quando ha lasciato la Città Vecchia di Gerusalemme. Queste schegge di memoria catturate, ritagliate e ricomposte, intime per Sabella perché appartenenti alla sua dimensione quotidiana, sono invece distanti dallo spettatore, prive di un riferimento familiare o riconoscibile, estratte da un anywhere anonimo. Nelle composizioni di Sabella ci si trova di fronte ad unarealtà personale ricostruita, che mantiene ormai soltanto un labile aggancio referenziale nei confronti del mondo riconoscibile, ma che slitta inevitabilmente verso una dimensione invisibile, mentale. States of mind è la definizione che l’artista ha dato di questi lavori. Lo stato d’animo è ciò che risuona come già conosciuto di fronte alle immagini, ciò che le avvicina all’esperienza...