New York / Vienna / Zurich / Berne / Manchester, April 2023

Invisible Women «Imagine a world where you find statues and monuments of woman and man that where pioniers of their times, innovators, inventors, role models – made by woman and man. This is a fundamental need for rebuilding not only our public landscape, but our own identities over all the world.» says Sarah Montani.

Profound, innovative and amazing - these are probably the words that aptly describe the current work of Sarah Montani.

The art installations will be shown in a Swiss pop-up art gallery in Lower Manhattan New York, before the start of the art fairs Independet, TEFAF, Frieze, VOLTA, CLIO Art Fair and Focus New York art fair. The exhibition then moves to Vienna to Ulrike Jakob/Galerie Hrobsky.

"The combination of 3000 years old art, canvas and oil paint with futuristic technologies as well as the unique design process are indeed quite new in art history. From the artistic idea to the concept to the execution, everything is designed, created, (executed) by the artist. The 2- or 3-dimensional painted or drawn original already exists as a complete work of art. It can be viewed from different sides thanks to augmented reality (AR) or positioned anywhere, even outside the exhibition building. An 'all-view' is created, sides of the artwork that viewers could never see in reality become tangible. This gives the works another extraordinary artistic impulse, a moving dimension and an additional added value. Sarah Montani creates the'SFERISM', a new art movement we would describe as ART +." says Martha Götz, art historian from Stuttgart Germany.

Montani's artworks are hadecrafted with paints on canvas. She works are created with 3000 year old techniques using encaustic and fire and various inks - without the use of an AI. She photographs excerpts from these works. In parallel, she is working co-creatively with her cousin Joey Montani on a digital sculpture, which they design and program together. Again, no AI is used. The sculpture is then further processed with the appropriate photo cutouts. In the final step, the digital sculptures are made available in the exhibition as augmented reality via advanced technologies: Exhibition visitors can thus view the artworks with their smartphones without any application.

It’ all about female statues in public space. The artist tore for the collages several sheets from a 24-volume art atlas, specifically the pages that show female statues, (has thus destroyed this atlas), then collaged those pages on wood, worked on them with encaustic, fire, oil and paint, so the kind of busts arise. The theme is the female statues in public spaces: they are mostly naked and without names.

Sarah Montani does not complain about this, "the statues are really beautiful and aesthetic, I don't mind the nudity itself, but mostly they are just allegorical, impersonal and have no name, no identity. And there are so many of them, in every city. Men, on the other hand, are usually depicted in a completely different way, as king, inventor, general, on horseback and - dressed.".

In these works, which are also multi-layered in a figurative sense, the artist dresses and gives names to the anonymous female statues by means of various artistic processes - and thus ultimately wishes for "more statues in public space that represent real women who once existed in real life." (S. Montani in an interview).

Some statues come to life - with (life) veins. So, in this cycle of more than 10 works, the artist gives the statues, besides clothes and new being, a new reality that extends the original one - Sferistic Art.

Sarah Montani’s Enkaustik Artwork showes famous historical statues of women, collaged on Wood, painted with Oil.

The physical artwork (100X100cmX3cm) is connected with a QR Code to tree Augmented Reality Artworks, Sferic Body of Wax I-III.

The AR artworks are meant to be but over statues to give them a dress.

Art Party

Saturday 22nd April 2023, 5 PM, Gallery in Nolita, Manhattan Artboxexpo, 345 Broome Street, New York 10013

Exhibition New York

17th- 26th April 2023, 345 Broome Street, New York 10013

Exhibition Wien

Ausstellung: 7.- 21. Oktober 2023, Galerie Hrobsky, Showroom for Young Art, Grundsteingasse 40, 1160 Wien

Vernissage in Anwesenheit der Kunstschaffenden: 7. Oktober 2023, 18 Uhr

Team

Sarah Montani, lic.iur., 1972, Digital pioneer, artist focusing on the Metaverse and Augmented Reality.
Based in Zürich, Switzerland.   sarahmontani.com

Joey Montani, 1996, 3D Digital Creator and Founder of APTIQ.
Located in Sonceboz near Berne, Switzerland.   aptiq.ch

Jamie F.G, 2000, 3D Artist, based near Manchester and currently traveling around the world. sarahmontani.com/jamiefg