On Earth
ON EARTH I
A collage from Plotzensee in Berlin.
ON EARTH II
A collage from Mount Etna in Sicily
ON EARTH III
A collage from the Amalfi Coast in Italy
XIBT Contemporary Art Magazine
Approaching, one notices that the collages are populated with scenes, fused together by photographs Sabella has taken on his travels. Yet, there is something alien in these images of our planet. Their depth and painterly perspective follow the logic of a dream, carrying various temporal references. Like fluid modes between painting and photography, their visual language is simultaneously historical and contemporary - a multicolored plastic raft floats alongside a Nymph in a paradisiacal landscape; a solitary traveler seems to wander on Mars or ancient Sparta. These collages reproduce our world in a simultaneously familiar and alien way, containing many layers and countless connotations. Sabella leaves it to the viewer to journey through their yet unseen panoramas, and possibly discover a new detail, a deeper reading, in each voyage.
Wavelengths Solo | Turin
Juliet Art Magazine
Metroquadro presents, the solo exhibition of the internationally renowned artist Steve Sabella born in Jerusalem and residing in Berlin since 2010. Sabella returns to Meteroquadro with “Wavelengths”, a collage of photos collage that includes a new series, On Earth. Since the mid 1990s, Sabella has pushed the photographic medium to its limits. His experimentation in darkroom processes and digital composition, along with his bold responses to pressing political conflicts of the last decades, has garnered him an international reputation.
Catawiki Auction Catalogue
The eco-Futuristic Photography of Steve Sabella
Your comment about how On Earth is an example of 'how people let others be' is very interesting. As a photographer, do you feel a tension to document the world as it is vs. the artistic impulse to exploit "reality" for your own artwork?
I see myself as an artist who explores the medium of photography. And what is reality? There are only perceptions of it, and even though it does seem that we share the same reality, in essence, we don't. I don't exploit reality. I observe it. In the 1990s, during the work on my first major art project, Search, I learned a quote by Robert Bly that still inspires me:
"Whoever wants to see the invisible must penetrate more deeply into the visible."
