Nicolò Sertorio: (DIS)CONNECTED

Nicolò Sertorio in his portfolio 'DisConnected' explores different aspects of landscapes in a counterpoint of bridging the gap between opposites in our life. 'DisConnected' is Sertorio's fine art photography that reached the conceptual level of the essential idea of Sartrean Existentialism and philosophical principles of the New Escapism of contemporary art.

The driving force behind Nicolò Sertorio's fine art conceptual photography is his desire to evoke the metamorphosis in the physical reality of his paired landscapes. The humanist impulse liberates the photographer's sense of disenfranchisement that derives from the fundamental disconnect we have from the natural world and the social isolation that comes with it. In times of social networking and multiple virtual links, it also transformed the idea of human connection itself. American photographer Nicolò Sertorio in his portfolio 'DisConnected' explores different aspects of the landscapes in a counterpoint of bridging the gap between opposites in our life. 'DisConnected' is Sertorio's fine art photography that reached the conceptual level of the essential idea of Sartrean Existentialism and philosophical principles of the New Escapism of contemporary art. Through his power of perception and inner compass, Sertorio explores and observe broken landscapes as a counterpoint of bridging the gap between opposites in our life. The peaceful landscapes are the main and only subject of his paired images. There is no human figure or sudden movement. Pale grayish spaces awoke intensity of light in a perfect photographic moment. The object of his interest is multi-perspective visual storytelling, from destination and environmental issue to fine art and everything in between.


As a photographer, Nicolò Sertorio wants to stay on the safe side of emotions, while he is open spiritual and philosophical. As much as Sertorio connected to his destinations, the driving force behind his work is his desire to evoke the changing nature of his landscapes; open spaces, deserts, forests, mountains or deep stone pits as open wounds on the soil. Sertorio is remarkable when it comes to pairing and manipulating different landscapes, as he folds the suggestion over a different combination of the scene. If we are speaking about pale images used to make the backlit gray and white landscapes the surface of the trees in the foreground, trails on the ground or piles of soil, his methods feel vintage and romantic, in spite of the fact that his reality is contemporary. Sertorio uses his paired photographs, shifting our focus between the subject matter and metaphysical beliefs. Working with a near-monochrome palette Nicolò Sertorio achieves effects we might associate with old faded images. In ''The Broken Promise of a Better Tomorrow'' (2017), he used the red plastic fence as a marker or landmark, to underline dramatic differences and dramas in the photography. In ''The Illusion of Control'' (2017) Sertorio is suggesting that reality is tempestuous and fragile, even when it seems calm and peaceful.


Sertorio's recent works are influenced by Conceptual art. His role of eyewitness with camera is blessed and cursed at the same time. He accepts that fact with awareness and great responsibility. Basically, there is the impact of social and political influences in Sertorio's double images and paired landscapes, expressing his concerns at a global level. Sertorio uses the power of truth in a polite but still open and honest way. He seeks and finds beauty in the red plastic fence, dead ground, and dying trees. Also, he finds the greatness in the simple details of great moral dilemmas of human existence. Ergo, there is an uncovering human side in his ability to find the poetic and transcendent in the collective responsibility and sins of our parents and ourselves. His images are even more washed out and pale than before. The thing is that vanishing color is searching for visual purity and inner peace. It is the state of visuality that speaks from the personal point of view, with a slightly selfish human approach. It is all about us, our feelings, experiences, and mistakes. Sertorio is nostalgic and reflecting at the same time. He knows that the past is behind us and the future is where we go.

Sertorio's artistic statement and his art are honest, strong, open and poetic in the same time. There is a passage in Aldous Huxley's novel 'Island' on the human condition that goes before visual:

Science starts with observation, but the observation is always selective. You have to look at the world through a lattice of projected concepts. Then you take the moksha-medicine, and suddenly there are hardly any concepts. You don't select and immediately classify what you experience; you just take it in. It's like that poem of Wordsworth's, 'Bring with you a heart that watches and receives.
–Aldous Huxley ''Island''


With little effort, we could discover his inner philosophical conversations and aesthetic pattern in his diptychs. It is his inner dialog between Europe and America, East and West, Mediterranean legacy and the West Coast. The fact being that Sertorio would describe it as the uncovering spiritual forces in his images 'based on the idea that the current sense of disenfranchisement derives from the fundamental disconnect we have from the natural world and the social isolation that comes with it'. That way he explains intention in his artistic statement. Nicolò Sertorio stands still on the fine edge between social documentary and conceptual art. In the world populated by conformism and aggression, his paired landscapes are searches for the peaceful wonders of the existence. And he hits at the very center.

Sertorio's approach to the subject is derived from the aesthetic and conceptual point of view. We could claim that Nicolò Sertorio could catch the basic (primordial) spirit of nature and environment. Also, his luminous landscapes, typical of Sertorio's ability to discover the poetic even in the most neglected and polluted place. He tends to find more positive human spirit suffused aside on the soil. On the other hand, the emphasis on Nicolò Sertorio conceptual fine art landscapes and melancholic intuitive beauty are the irreversible flows of life at inner level, merely transcendental amount of knowledge. It is metaphysical matter. His almost monochrome landscapes exist as a deeply personal spiritual journey. The main thing is that in his faded atmospheres we could find flaws of our emotional states of mind. In his critical state of mind, Sertorio recalls that all aspects of environment we know, in clear composition or unexpected counterpoints, could possess an austere beauty. Finally, it does not matter if the substance is of the natural or the artificial. All in all, it is about our feeling of deep respect and concern. It is about our future and our sufficiency because all human beings depend one on another. It is basic necessity.

References
Huxley, Aldous (1962; 2002) Island. English.
Harper Perennial Modern Cassics.
ISBN 13 9780060085490

Huxley, Aldous (1969) Otok. Croatian.
Zagreb, Zora.