Hymns: A surreal journey
As an artist Ivano Sabot was born in Rome on an afternoon in August while conversing with friends, like in a dream, he saw a masked face emerging from the water and then - click - the first photograph took shape in his mind.
That vision remained with his thoughts for days until finally, after realizing the first image and having in his hands, Hymns was born.
A dreamlike journey in which reality and fantasy merge and blend in a context of madness and theatricality.
Visions that carry the viewer to a harsh and unstable world where devoured and digested human bodies, returned changed, transformed in a landscape of eternal mountains and stormy skies.
This stage of the project followed the creative path the artist pursued at first. He choosed a simple visual language by placing a paper-mâché mask in the core of the image evoking around it, with a few but significant objects with social and costumes themes.
But why using a mask as a subject?
Masks are and will always be a vital symbol for humanity. These small items can give unlimited power to the bearer.
They can hide us, give us new identities; through them we can observe the world for what it actually is without filters.
Sabot's relocation in Prague at the end of 2015 took him to a more intimate path. The paper mache mask becomes a face, a mirror that reflects the intense emotions of change. The language also changes from a two-dimensional and flat vision to a space one can explore in its entirety as if to claim one's place in a foreign environment.
The surrealist movement, the fascination for the painters of the 16th century, the love for masters of painting Caspar David Friedrich, Arnold Böcklin, Zdzisław Beksiński, and musicians such as Bauhaus, Coil, are the inspirations on which the artist builds his fictional world.
This pushed him in a period of experiments, trying to find his own voice and convinced the artist to leave the mask as the main subject of his work and to expand his vision into a surreal world in which he continues to project his emotions, his views, and also his criticism of modern society.