Andrea Sabattini was born in Fabbrico (RE) on 12 March 1966. He lives and works in Correggio (RE) and Verona. In the 80s after completing his studies in Art and Architecture he began alternating his time between work and painting and eventually devoted himself entirely to the latter at the end of the 90s. He experimented with materials and techniques that lead him to perfect his artistic stroke which is very much appreciated by the general public in his exhibitions not only in Italy but also in large foreign cities such as Lienz, Edinburgh and New York.

The paintings of Sabattini, a young “biographer” of our time, speak for themselves. He specializes in taking “pictures with a brush” of contemporary social times and reality. His works of art speak (but they “listen” as well in order to regenerate into new documenting images) of themes that are the same as those of people running on the “track” of everyday life. The sound of colors: do you find it a little risky as a title? From a purely auditory point of view you may be right: but if you turn on the imagination switch and mix “young at heart” with non-oxidizing enthusiasm, quite a few whispers, shrieks and even incoming “calls” from the colors on the canvas, well then yes, you will perceive them for real. All that is needed is a little commitment and the will to participate. Sabattini’s cans and “containers” (heaven knows what he was expecting by his inspiration!) clash amongst each other in the mechanical structures they are composed of. His wrathful computers croak. They are the spokesman of plummeting stock markets or “explosive” news like frogs in heat. Then there are the women who scream their disappointment at the lack of man’s understanding. The automatons too are present. They are painted as if they were men who cast off the rigid voice that machines use by emitting real words, as if they were poets praising the chatelaine singing songs from Provence. The Maestro put an enormous amount of colors in the costumes which were filtered by his rhythmic irony. And what about the cigarette butts? Even those, in their futility, that make the noise of repentance, taking on the fault of the “mortal threat” that strike our lungs. What else does it take to understand the “painting-consciousness” by Andrea Sabattini and become part of it? The “Sound of colors” exhibition in Verona – Castelvecchio Museum – From the mid-80s Andrea Sabattini is a graphic designer and painter yet maintains his own “graffiti-comic” style that is appreciated by the general public in his exhibitions not only in Italy but also in large foreign cities such as Lienz, Edinburgh and New York, where the Street Art “graffiti” movement began in the 70s. Like the New York graffiti artists and the well-known Italian graffiti artists: Bros, Frode, Ivan and Blù and even Sabba who performs during the night, using spray cans, on the walls and under the bridges of the Milan-Bologna railway, endlessly reproducing in all possible positions his “little man”, who is always wide-eyed looking at people and the world like Keith Haring’s work Without a doubt, in human history, streets and walls are the most effective means for expressing works of art. They can be seen by anyone who passes by and “Sabba” is well aware of this but he soon decided to reproduce his “tags” and graffiti on canvas, using oil paints, acrylics and inks instead of spray cans and now signs the canvas with his legal name. In Sabattini’s paintings one can note a touch of American Pop culture especially in his “all eyes” fictional character, which represents people and the “mass” and their incessant curiosity, that are always peering at you in everything you do. His stylized character takes on his own evidence, his own expressive moment, supported by vibrant chromatic lighting, which is an emotional and allusive instant, or rather the sign of the artist’s picturesque communication with his dreamlike and fantastic visions deriving from objective reality. His works of art as well come from the digression of nostalgic wandering in memories. However they create a fascinating and unpredictable world resulting from the chromatic effects and the lively sense of his tales of everyday life. – Fabio Tedeschi –

Recent personal exhibitions: September 2007 – Sala proloco Sillian – Lienz (Austria) Kaos May 2007 – Castelfranco Emilia A brief moment of tranquility February 2008 – Fivizzano (MS) Cigarette butts October 2008 – Modena – exhibition hall “il paradisino” I observe and remain motionless December 2008 – Verona – Castelvecchio museum The sound of colors February 2009 – Brescia – personal exhibition Just one more then I’ll quit May 2009 – gunpowder magazine – Lazise (VR) Sings designs and more September 2009 – Orvieto (TR) Kaos II March 2010 – Piombino (LI) I prefer primary colors April 2010 – Correggio (RE) A break while suspended amongst the colors Recent collective exhibitions: October 2007 – Chiavari (GE) Chiavari summer events April 2008 – Edinburgh The Torrance Gallery January 2009 – New York New trends in Italian art Cultural Center three colours December 2009 – Reggio Emilia Fiera Nazionale d’arte Immagina.

Fabio Valentini born in Correggio (RE) on the 29-4-1980, he lives and works in Reggio Emilia and Bologna, where he is attending the Academy of Fine Arts. The true protagonist of his poetic work is passion, the founding experience of existence: a feeling that is intended not only in a strictly erotic way but also in its most intimate and collected components. These sanguine and evocative representations rise powerfully against the exploitation of the body seen as a fetish, a sort of subversion of aesthetic sensuality imposed by the consumerism of contemporary society, a return to the original meanings, a primordial extreme, to a carnal and raw dimension.

The genuflected Body, body, body and yet more body. A battered body from the stigmata of passion. It reverberates through expressiveness and is intended to convey a personal experience that is expressed thanks to a pictorial dimension which is unpredictably lit. Female meat, marked by a vigorous red, opens to show a corporeality, even interior. An inexhaustible source of introspective torment. A slice from a deformed body suddenly appears from the neutrality of the base, amplifies its significant scope and seeks an extrinsic sensory alliance. Fabio Valentini’s painting passes through the narrow concept of form and surpasses it in the name of an expressionist gesture that broadens into new fields of anatomical knowledge and it contaminates the dermis via the high metamorphic rations that are typical of the ambiguous experience of the contemporary world. The true protagonist of his poetic work is passion, the founding experience of existence: a feeling that is intended not only in a strictly erotic way but also in its most intimate and collected components. Paraphrasing what Teresa Macri claims “the contemporary body is now a map on which different synaesthesia and instinctual feelings converge.” The dermal inquiry is the most appropriate communication tool for detecting existential mappings and their sublimated passion, intercepted by the aggressive pictorial dimension. These sanguine and evocative representations rise powerfully against the exploitation of the body seen as a fetish, a sort of subversion of aesthetic sensuality imposed by the unrestrained and asexual consumerism of contemporary society, a return to the original meanings, a primordial extreme, to a carnal and raw dimension which has an incredible and terrible outcome. Francesca Baboni, Stefano Taddei
Main exhibitions:
2004, “Skin-Pelle” Studio de Bonis gallery in Reggio Emilia. Curated by Francesca Baboni and Stefano Taddei
2005, “Passion” Castello del Vescovo in Arceto (RE). Curated by Francesca Baboni and Stefano Taddei.
2005, “Talent Lab” Spazio Fisico gallery in Modena. Curated by Francesca Baboni e Chiara Messori.
2005, “Festival Filosofia sui sensi” in Carpi. Curated by Francesca Baboni and Stefano Taddei.

Marco Spaggiari born in Correggio (RE), on the 26 April 1974, where he lives and works. He studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna and is in his last year in Professor Massimo Pulini’s painting course.

Expressing through alphabetic language what Art wants to communicate through sign, composition, color and subject, seems out of place in my eyes: like forcing writers to recite their compositions in public or illustrate them artistically. I firmly believe in the unforced ability of the users of works of art to develop ideas based on their own visual culture and on their own emotions. The attempt, as well, to introduce a subject as complex as Painting, (and my respect for it leads me to use a capital P, Painting), inevitably leads to talk of passion, personal taste and opinions that are strong and difficult to share. There is a risk of using irritating or inappropriate phrases. I am already “fighting” my own banalities, the limited incisiveness of my ideas: a daily and violent “struggle” that leads to trying, revisiting and destroying part of my work in a state of perpetual dissatisfaction. I would like to delegate the uncomfortable task in these few lines taken from a book, which might be termed as “in this field” but if it is considered as in this filed then I would define it as the “human field”. “I admire – and I have never admired (I was about to say envied) so much, as in the predicament of this lecture of mine – the scholars of art, accredited scholars, the “attitrés” critics who know how to place the entire work of an artist into a clear definition, who possess aesthetically precise instruments like appropriate wording, appropriate language and indisputable documents; who know how to skillfully and effectively, bend, direct, channel inductions, inform, compare and contrast: how to infallibly get the desired predetermined conclusion, appropriate for a given artistic orientation; and when finally they are in front of the work of art – of any author, of any country – they have a definitive, convincing judgment. I do not know how to do any of that: I, a painter, look at, say, a picture, a picture that I like (and how this verb sounds out of tune is already a clue) and I wish I could stop the train of thought and open my eyes, open them as much as possible and become master of this work and not understand it but just take it; dominate it and not rationally but with an instinctive act of violence (…) I believe that every critical reasoning remains sterile and idle if it is not heated by a touch of poetry (…). “Felice Casorati, Writings interviews letters, Abscondita SRL, Milan 2004, p. 66.
Main Exhibitions:
“Donne Disegni / Women Drawings”, September 2004, Metamorfosi Gallery (RE);
“Il Senza Titolo / Without a title”, March 2005, Cavriago (RE);
“Fuori i Talenti – giovani artisti nelle gallerie della città / Let’s see Talent – young artists in the city’s galleries”, July 2005, sponsored by the Municipality of Reggio Emilia, the Department of Culture and Museums;
“Treperdue / Threefortwo”, September 2005, Torre Civica, San Polo d’Enza (RE);
“Paranoica / Paranoid”, December 2005, Palazzo dei Principi, Correggio (RE); “All’incrocio / At the intersection”, June 2006, Torre Civica “Campanon”, Guastalla (RE).