Sara Dario
Photo sculptures | Ceramic art | Porcelain art
Italy
About the artist
Ceramics - shaped, built and united with memory photographs
Sara Dario fuses sculpture and photography through the technique Silk Screen, the production of silkscreen matrices with photographic means. She prints in colour at high temperatures directly onto raw porcelain. This technique allows her to cut out, deconstruct, reconstruct and model images to create photo-sculptures and installations. In her creative process, photography is as integral to the art as sculptural form. The pieces are all connected by the concept of movement, inspired by the wind as it blows through the trembling trees or the waving meadows.
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Sara Dario was born in 1976 in Venice, where she attended the Liceo Artistico and then completed her studies in sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Carrara. During her studies she became interested in photography and printing techniques, not only in traditional techniques such as black and white and colour, but especially in unconventional techniques such as photogravure and photo-serigraphy, printing on different materials and supports. These techniques were deepened during a three-year stay at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich.
She does not like to talk about herself, she lets her works speak for themselves, but fortunately during an exhibition in Città di Castello she had met a special person who fully understood her thoughts.
The sculptor has developed a personal technique of silkscreen photo-engraving, replacing traditional paper or textile supports with elegant, luminous and very white porcelain. Sara constructs her photo sculptures like a film director edits a film. She identifies scenes, fixes them on the ceramic and assembles them into long strips from which she finally composes a homogeneous narrative. The work is thus structured by the articulated overlapping of ceramic tapes, reminiscent of the analogue, chaotically piled-up films of yesteryear. The ribbons form the floating shape of the work and set the rhythm of the narrative they contain. At first glance, the works may look like ordinary vases, but closer inspection reveals the narrative level, which becomes legible through a double view of the work, from inside and outside, leading the viewer in a circular and ascending manner, from bottom to top, as the ribbons unroll. The narrative imprinted in the material draws from the artist's personal experiences, where current events meet past memories, recreating a surreal and dreamlike dimension. The theme Sara Dario takes up in these works is the city, drawing inspiration from sophisticated and refined cinematographic and literary references. Indeed, the allusions to Wim Wenders, director and photographer of monumental and decadent architecture, are obvious, as are the references to Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities. With this book in particular, Sara Dario seems to want to render a visible and tangible version of those ideal places that existed only in the minds of those who narrated them. Punctual assonances can be discerned in the descriptions of some of the Continuous Cities without Beginning and without End, which, as Calvino tells us, develop in an indeterminate succession of architectures, without resolution of continuity. But while in Calvino's work there is still an attempt to give order to the chaos of reality by presenting an ordered combinatorial structure, in Sara Dario's work the supporting scheme of the figural narrative does not adhere to a rigid grid. The form of the work is determined by the free compositional play of the bands, which makes the viewing of the individual scenes more fluid and the overall image more unified. The result is a moving, organic form that is free of useless decorativeness and in which chaos becomes the very essence of the work and the reality that defines it.
Citta di Castello, 2016 Lorenzo Fiorucci
Works | Series
Art objects made of porcelain and photographs
References
Awards
2021 Silver Award “33° Edition of the International Ceramic Art of Gmunden” (Austria)
2021 Silver Award “Ceramica in Love Three” 60° Mostra della ceramica Castellamonte with “Quel che affidiamo al vento” (Italia)
2021 Honor Mention “XXVIII Concorso di Ceramica Contemporanea Grottaglie” with “Amicizia” (Italia)
2019 Golden Award “Thirteenth edition of the International Biennial of Ceramic Art of Aveiro” (Portugal)
2019 Silver Award “Blanc the Chine – International ceramic art awards” with Whale on Whale (Chine/France)
2018 Silver Award “Internationale Biennale Martinsons Awards”, Daugavpils, (Latvia)
2018 Honor Mention “V° International Ceramic Biennale”, Ascoli Piceno, (Italy)
2017 Golden Award ”Inspiration: Porzellan – Keramik Meseum Westerwald” with “Von de Fenster”, (Germany)
2017 Honor Mentions and Public Award “Concours International de Ceràmica de L’Alcora” with “Memoria Andata”, (Spain)
2014 Golden Award “City Diessen”, with the theme “Circle and the sphere” presenting the work “Favela”, (Germany)
2013 Bronze Award from Fondation Brukner “International competition of the city Carouge” with the theme “The Garden gnome”, (Swiss).
2010 Awards in Creazioni Giovani – Macef Design Award– Milan, (Italy)
2008 Honor Mentions “XXV Biennale di Scultura Aldo Ajò” city of Gubbio with “Memories”, (Italy)
2001 Scholarship young photographer “Premio Giovani Canon 2000” with a photographic installation “Gradiva”, Milan, (Italy)
Solo exhibitions
Group exhibitions
2021 “Ceramica in Love Three” Palazzo Botton Castellamonte (Italy)
2021 “Castello Episcopio Grottaglie” with “Amicizia” (Italy)
2019 “Blanc de China Blue the Nice”, Palais Massena NICE, (France)
2019 “XIV Biennal International the Ceramica Manises, Valencia, (Spain)
2019 “International exposition”, Taoxchuan ART Museum of CAFA, Jingedezhen, (China)
2018 “International Ceramics Triennial UNICUM, National Museum Slovenia, Ljubljana, (Slovenia)
2018 “Artisti della ceramica”, Fornace Pasquinucci, Capraia e Limite, (Italy)
2017 ” Extra murum” Villa caldogno, Caldogno, (Italy)
2017 “Eunique di Karlsruhe“,Karlsruhe, (Germany)
2017 “Mirror” Musée de Carouge, Carouge, (Swiss)
2016 “24th International Vallauris Biennale”, Vallauris, (France)
2016 “Sculture di luce “ e quando il sole cade, la città si accende” Palazzo Ducale Mantova, (Italy)
2015 “Terrae – ceramics in informal and contemporary research” with “Favelas”, Città di Castello, (Italy)
2015 “59° Premio Faenza”, with “Favela”, Faenza, (Italy)
2015 “Gallerie89” Ampuis, Lyon, (France)
2015 “Keramik-geformt und gebaut” in the “Galerie Handwerk Munchen”, (Germany)
2014 “International prize of Contemporary Ceramics in Westerwald, (Germany)
2013 “58° Premio Faenza”, with “Voyeurisme”, Faenza, (Italy)
2013 “Futuro Anteriore”: Light installation in porcelain “Il Viaggiatore”, Padova, (Italy)
2013 “In & Out” complements of décor and designe, Light installation in porcelain “Casa dolce Casa?!” Este (Italy)
2013 “Tarralha Festival Européen des Arts Céramiques“, Saint Quentin la Poterie on” Light installation in porcelain “Il mattino ha l’oro in bocca” and gres istallation “La fabbrica” (France)
2011 “Contemporary Italian Ceramics” Bandol, (France)
2011 “57° Premio Faenza”, with “Scatola di ricordi”, Faenza, (Italy)
2007 “Earth” Collective ceramics, Montelupo Fiorentino, (Italy)
2002 “Art of Eating” Milan photographic and sculptural installation with the theme “Water”, (Italy)
2001 “Fleissig im Laim” Munchen, Group exhibitions of painting and photography, (Germany)
2000 “Pictures Debut” Rome University Tor Vergata, Rome Palace of Exhibitions, Installation sculptural photographic “portrait” (Italy)
Museum exhibitions
2019 | Aveiro, Portugal “Biennial Of Ceramic Art “ Museu Ceramica
2019 | Jingedezhen, China “International exposition”, Taoxchuan ART Museum of CAFA
2018 | Ljubljana, Slovenia “International Ceramics Triennial UNICUM, National Museum Slovenia
2017 | Carouge, Swiss “Mirror” Musée de Carouge