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26 July 2023 > 26 August 2023 Kindly invited to the mini online "Unfamiliar Area" exhibition "Inner Saboteur ('Don't Call the Devil!')” by Claudi Sovrè.
The artist Claudi Sovrè calls himself a surrealist, because he is not interested in documenting the visible exterior, but rather in portraying the invisible interior of the individual. Thus, he puts on display the world according to his own rules of the game, which allows the viewer a certain retreat from the everyday life, although he himself also deals with it all the time in a less obvious way. Despite the fact that works easily deceive with their satisfying superficiality, their subliminal message is more complex than a deliberately misleading, skilful and entertaining image. In other words, he confronts the cloudiness of life by creating utopian worlds, which is why his works are deliberately wrapped in a metaphorical cellophane and resemble a false projection of contemporary digital society. Therefore, it is up to the viewer to decipher their essence or understand the so-called personal myths, which he constructs on the basis of his own experience (memories, dreams, reflections) and in connection with the symbolism of ancient beliefs and modern pop culture.
The collage entitled Inner Saboteur combines a studio photo of a model with a documentary photo of a cemetery as well as their digital processing by the artist. The photographed model is dressed in black clothes, wearing a hat and gloves. The figure is depicted in various body postures. His facial expressions are exaggerated; his smile is distorted or he covers his face with his hands. He embodies the inner saboteur, the one who prevents us from feeling good about ourselves. The one who convinces us that we are bad, inadequate or redundant. The artist Claudi Sovrè multiplied the photographed model, placing it in the whole collage format. In this way, he illustrated the omnipresent, dominant and negative voice we all experience in moments of insecurity, restlessness or fear.
The inner saboteur is the way in which an individual experiences an imperfect self, disturbs oneself and stumbles over their mistakes. It is an internal conversation that takes place at unknown, uncomfortable moments. It happens when we are surer of our failure than of our success. It is a dialogue between positive and negative characteristics, facts and actions. A dialogue that would like to convince us that we are not good enough, that we have not achieved what we want, that we have not done everything right. An internal dialogue, which is a set of feelings experienced when we make mistakes, wrong decisions or unintentional actions.
CV OF THE ARTIST
Claudi Sovrè (1994) is an art photographer and costume designer who has been interested in metamorphoses of natural subjects into the supernatural ones for the past ten years. He achieves the latter in three phases, namely: firstly, with the costume transformation of a human into a character; secondly, with a photographic portrait of them in the studio of his grandfather, a painter Sava Sovrè; and lastly, by digitally collaging numerous cut photographs, which, in the end, form a harmonious whole. By 2023, he has participated in 9 group and 7 solo photo exhibitions, among others, in the the Generali Gallery (2020) and in the Right Atrium of the City Hall Ljubljana (2022), a cover photo for National Geographic Slovenia (2017), mentorship by the renowned photojournalist Arnet Hodalič, intermedia project supported by the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia (2018), photographic representation for Canon Slovenia (2021), costume design for more than ten performances in Ljubljana theatres, such as The Slovenian National Drama Theatre of Ljubljana, Mini Theatre, Theatre Glej, Theatre Osmo/za. He received the Prešeren award for costume design for the play L. V. (Beautiful Vida), directed by Aljoša Živadinov Zupančič (2022).
Inner Saboteur ('Don't Call the Devil!'), 110 × 110 cm, photo-collage, 2022