SAUL.ZANoLARi

SAUL ZANOLARI: TAKING AWAY THE EMPERORs CLOTHES – London – May 1st 2009

For release 1 May 2009

Welcome to the world of Saul Zanolari, a world where fake identities are stripped away and the subjects are left raw and naked.

Among Saul’s specimens are European royalty, rock stars, elite socialites and old and new celebrities. Many of Saul’s creations now sit in major international collections.

For many people in the public eye, plastic surgery is the Emperor’s new clothes. It is used to add a new veneer of skin to a PR personality. We are always unsure how many layers of plastic public figures use to create their PC persona.

But now you’re allowed to shout: ‘The Emperor is naked’. Saul sucks out the botox, unpicks the stitches and removes the fake public face from his subjects. He shows us the vulnerable person behind the mask.

Saul’s irony and creative vitality allows him to tackle complex and often awkward themes like the changing values in aesthetics.

Saul’s collection of images offers us a surreal 2D wax museum; made of a mixture of fantasy and reality, thoughts, concepts and images. The digitally remastered psyche is embalmed forever in its frozen world

You cannot be in front of a Saul Zanolari artwork: you are immediately sucked inside his world. Saul gradually removes the protagonist’s assumed identity and introduces an avatar, who morphs the subject’s features back into the real person deep inside.

The new Saul Army grows with the careful edition of select individuals. The queue to join the army is growing with international celebrities and individuals commissioning Saul to reverse their public persona in order to join the ranks of his naked army. Michael Jackson, Madonna, and even the Queen have joined Saul’s Army and many more will follow.

Saul is working on bringing his army to life in 3D form introducing collectable figurative sculpture. His range is also expanding to ceramic artworks and public realm projects.

Saul is now releasing his army on the world. His full range of work can be seen at www.saulzanolari.com

A selection of his work, including large scale imposing images of his army, is available from www.eyepillowart.com

For UK press enquiries and to arrange an interview with the artist please email info@aeonarts.co.uk or call 077385 43774 (44 77385 43774 outside the UK ).

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BABY … LIKE THAT – SALON ARTISTIQUE SEXPOT – Amsterdam – April 4/June 7 2009

Spring has sprung and that means babies. In today s world the word baby has become a double entendre. Babies are our future. Babies are little people we love. Babies are needy and cry. But, baby is also a term of endearment for husbands, wives, partners and lovers.

Sexpotproductions is pleased as punch to present Baby … like that a group show of international artists in various media. Whether your changing diapers or shouting from your bedroom, we promise you will be rattled.

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SAUL SOUL – HEIST GALLERY – NYC – June 5/June 30 2008

Talia Eisenberg is pleased to present the work of Saul Zanolari. Having met with great success abroad, Zanolari comes to the Heist Gallery to debut his exquisitely executed and uncanny prints in his first New York solo exhibition. Saul Soul is comprised of eight digital paintings printed on glossy paper, each portraying a grotesquely fantastical yet eerily familiar portrait. As Zanolari reconstructs the figure, he calls into question our perception of the body and its relationship with a perceived human identity.

Zanolaris two-dimensional, malleable representations simultaneously invite and repulse the viewer. Figures pulled from pop culture are delicately manipulated to create unnerving new relationships as Zanolaris subjects, often impersonal, are transformed into intimate portraitures. With a bold color palette and tantalizing detail, Zanolari draws us into his twisted world with theatrical measure. Mixing images from celebrity culture with elements drawn from childhood fairytales, Zanolari creates environments that are both placid and sinister. A pair of weary, creased eyes on the pristine face of a child forces us to reconsider her innocence in a culture that encourages premature adulthood. Fables commonly used to impart moralistic themes to impressionable children become part of a dark new context. Likewise, childish features incorporated into an adult portrait cause us to contemplate an alternate perspective. Utilizing tools and subjects unique to the generation of today, Zanolari redefines the traditional portrait with extraordinary skill.

Saul Zanolari (b. 1977, Mendrisio, Switzerland) lives and works in the Italian region of Switzerland, having recently returned from a year long residence in Beijing. He is currently represented by the F2 Gallery in Beijing and by the Galerie Mamia Bretesche in Paris. Since 2005 he has had several solo shows and participated in many group exhibitions worldwide.

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POST-HUMAN - F2 GALLERY – Beijing – March 1/March 31 2008

F2 Gallery is delighted to present a solo show Post-human by Swiss artist Saul Zanolari. will open at 3pm on Saturday March 1st running through March 31 st , 2008.

In 1992 Jeffrey Deitch invented the term Post-human to define an artistic current which now numbers, among others, Matthew Barney and Jeff Koons. Post-human is the world where we now live, a world of transformation, manipulation and contrivance which is a consequence of scientific and technological advancement, especially in the field of genetics: we are no longer bound to our original appearance, as we now have the opportunity to rebuild and totally change ourselves, passing from a natural human evolution to an artificial one.

The original art works of the young Swiss artist Saul Zanolari, who has absorbed the characteristics of the Post-human current to perfection, will be presented in his first solo exhibition in China at F2 Gallery in Beijing from March 1st to 31st, 2008.

Saul Zanolaris technique, which cannot be placed in a common artistic language, takes the observer by surprise, since his works are neither photographs, paintings or digital designs, but an original combination of them all. He does not confine himself to the realism of a picture or the stillness of a painting, but strays from the classical techniques into a personal artistic code. Starting from a simple figurative picture, Zanolari digitally transforms the photo into a whole new portrait in which the protagonists original identity is undermined by the one of his antagonist, a sort of avatar, who steals natural and human details in order to transform, exasperate or destroy them in a surreal balance between inner identity and exterior body.

The Beijing exhibition at F2 Gallery will present about 30 of Saul Zanolaris works, including a selection of the Twilight of the Goddess series, showcasing celebrities such as Madonna and Sophia Loren. In addition, Zanolari will exhibit his 2006 series Dolls, a collection inspired by classic fairy-tale characters, reinterpreted in a contemporary way. With his Post-human Dolls the artist looks for new ways to report our childhood stories, showing a Little Red Riding Hood with wooden legs, a Princess and the pea who cries silently, and an Alice in Wonderland dressed up as a fetish waitress. Exclusively for this exhibition, Zanolari has also created three dimensional sculptures of a selection of 6 Dolls.

To complete the event two huge linked compositions will also be presented, symbols of the artists Chinese experience. Four big eyes, the artists own in one of the works and a pair of almond-shaped ones in the other, investigate and question a Chinese reality which is still at the centre of intense social, political and environmental debates. These two original works close an exhibition that puts together, for the first time, the greatest part of Zanolaris artistic flair, featuring a young talented artist whose success is his own personal and bizarre artistic language.

Saul Zanolari was born in Mendrisio, Switzerland, in 1977. He has a degree in Philosophy. His work has gained considerable attention in Rome, Milan, Paris, London, New York and Miami.

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BEAUHEMIA - NETTIE HORN GALLERY – London – July 6/August 12 2007

Kate Street, Debbie Lawson, Antti Laitinen, Annie Attridge, Mike Newton, Rebecca Taber, Bjorn Veno, Hektor Mamet, Eduard Bigas and Saul Zanolari; and special performance by Mark McGowan on the opening night.

Nettie Horn (formerly the Brick Lane Gallery) proudly presents BEAUHEMIA, the inaugural exhibition at our new premises on Vyner St, and featuring work by the gallerys artists - displaying a broad spectrum of characteristics that are at once beautiful, sometimes decadent, and occasionally foreboding. The works in this exhibition explore themes surrounding the loss of and search for identity and meaning in our post-modern society; a personal conflict which often overlays with current political, cultural and psychological climates. Each artist is concerned with the conception of identity, and how it is played out in the modern world, often to conflicting ends - resulting in the creation of autonomous spaces where identity and personal ethos collide within a staged mise-en-scene. Some deal with these notions of identity and meaning by creating emotive and narrative pieces addressing themes of melancholia or personal conflict, while others have a more idiosyncratic approach, lacing their works with humour and absurdity.

Zanolaris digitally remastered images offers a surreal two-dimensional wax museum where the subject is stripped down and remodelled into a caricatured persona reflecting the universal and fundamental questions of identity, nature and angst through paradoxes and metaphors. Zanolari uses the subject as a pretext to deal with more specific issues and concepts.

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WHAT I CANT PUT DOWN IN WORDS – LUCIANO INGA-PIN CONTEMPORARY ART GALLERY – Milan – April 26/June 2 2007

London, Paris, Milan, Rome. Two, three, four times each. And then it came the States and the Far East: New York City, San Antonio and the great sales success in Miami Beach, at the last Art Exhibition. Beijing, Hong Kong, Tokyo.

Not bad for a 30 year old guy who lives just like hes performing a story with no end and no beginning and with the only aim of producing other stories, magic and emotions.

Saul Zanolaris work is a disturbing representation of the world in his continuous metamorphosis, through a series of unbeatable portraits of newborn bodies rehearsing on lifes stage even if the lights are off.

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SAUL ZANOLARI by Helen Jennings – January 2007

Saul Zanolaris illustrated world is a spooky and ever so slightly scary one. His infamous portraits are based in a reality all of his own dark imagining where things go bump in the night.

Born 29 years ago in Mendrisio, Switzerland, he studied philosophy, then photography and now works as a professional artist, illustrator and designer having developed a unique way of digitally reworking and warping photos of the living to make them somehow other and wicked.

His subjects have included musicians such as Vitalic, Simon Le Bon, Dirty Sanchez, The Raveonettes and Miss Kittin, as well as friends and creatives who intrigue including drag queens, writers and DJs. He turns each one into a 2D waxwork of their former selves that is somehow rueful, mysterious and trapped in the blackest of canvasses for infinity, which is just as well because if they escaped, these characters look like theyd wreak havoc.

Sauls work has been exhibited as far and wide as New York, London, Paris, Basel and Milan. Coming months see him travel to Japan and China too, so will the Orient find him naughty or nice? Probably a little bit of both.

Goldilocks and the Three Bears

When you think of Goldilocks you think of a cute young girl who skips through the woods and eats porridge. When Saul Zanolari thinks of Goldilocks he conjures up a murderous, mischievous nymph with a predilection for hairy gay men. This little lady bites back.

Ready To Be Born

Is it a he or she? Is it a doll or baby? Is it inside or out? Who can you see reflected in its big eyes? All these questions and more present themselves as you look at Ready To Be Born. The answers, of course, are as ambiguous as Sauls own inexplicable intentions.

Julie Atlas Muz - Motherhood training

Exotic performer Julie Atlas Muz subjected herself to Sauls pixilated touch and this is the devastating result. Simultaneously young yet old, her skin folds, her hair turns to flax and her nipples? Well, the less said about her nipples the better. Ouch.

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STARE – NETTIEHORN GALLERY – London -October 10/October 29 2006

Brick Lane Gallery is pleased to present Stare, a group show addressing and challenging the traditional portrait. The exhibition brings together work by five painters all exploring the figurative portrait with a concern for distortion and deformation.

Artists exhibiting include: SCOTT EVERINGHAM, LUIS GALAN, CHAMBLISS GIOBBI, JONATHAN JOUBERT, MIKE NEWTON AND SAUL ZANOLARI.

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NEW NEW PORTRAITS – MAMIA BRETESCHE GALLERY – Paris – September 16/October 16 2006

Saul Zanolari explores, through photography, aesthetic and human beauty limits. He makes his own the image of real and famous people – such as Simon Le Bon, Miss Kittin, and others – as well as relatives and friends.

His digital photos, brilliantly edited, take us to a fantastic which can be familiar to the viewer but also annoying for their hyperrealism and strenght of physical detail which –may reveal a kind of monstruosity.

Saul Zanolaris works approach the human being representing not only its physical features but, through an editing process so deep and similar to the aesthetic plastic surgery, he also put a great stress on apparently irrelevant details, on colours and so on, driving the whole photographical portrait concept to collapse with the aesthetic expectations of the subject.

His design style can be considered half the way to pop art and fashion photography. Saul makes his own a new world, made by a unique vision of the human being and his common way of representation. All his works, even the latest ones, have been inspired by real pictures whose subject is a family member, a friend or a certain kind of celebrity.

Saul Zanolari was born in Mendrisio, Switzerland, on September 18th 1977. He degreed in Philosophical studies then he turned his interest to photography, considered in its wide acception.

His works have been exhibited in New York, London, Milan, Basel and Paris galleries. Since 1997 he became a professional artist, photographer and designer. Actually his main interest can be essentially identified with « surgical » photo-editing, an handicraft tecnique behind the industrial process of photography.

Exploring this new path let him found a new artistic dimension for figurative art.

Saul Zanolari set now new rules in an ancient art such as the portrait one, using modern technological tools.

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DOLLS, DRAGS AND DJS – BRICKLANE GALLERY – London – May 29/June 12 2006

London is going to offer you a new art show - Camp - by young Swiss artist Saul Zanolari.

This artist has already exposed his work in New York, Paris, Basel and Milan.

The Brick Lane Gallery opens its doors with the photographic avanguarde of Saul Zanolari. His work represents our scary and frightening living world through portraits depicting a mummified, yet, spiritual world.

A mixture of fashion clips, drawing and pop art, the portraits signed by Saul represent unusual subjects such as drag queens, dolls and Djs worldwide famous. From Simon Le Bon to Miss Kittin, moving through Amanda Le Pore, this art show offers a surreal wax museum in 2-dimensions made of images digitally remastered by Sauls expert hand whose artistic genius has been able to draw and retouch each detail in an extraordinary way.

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LO SGUARDO ALTROVE - LUCIANO INGA-PIN / CONTEMPORARY ART – Milan – March 17/May 31 2005

Che cosa pensa di te chi guarda?... E tu che cosa pensi di lui?... Abbiamo raccolto diversi ritratti (alcuni già noti altri assolutamente inediti) e ideato un percorso trasversale di ciò che ci circonda, delle persone che incontriamo ogni giorno. Per conoscerle meglio e poter misurare finalmente la quantità di visibile, del non-detto, del non-visto: lui, lei, loro di fronte allo spettacolo della loto esistenza, la loro collocazione sociale. In altre parole: portare alla ribalta uno sguardo più aperto, meno ipocrita e decisamente più attuale.