Art as a response to the pain of the world, as a call to rediscover the immaterial part of oneself, as a warning against the numbness of the mind.
After the uproar caused by "Io Sono" and "Davanti a te", the first two immaterial sculptures sold at auction in 2021 for 15 thousand and 28 thousand euros respectively, the artist from Santa Giusta Salvatore Garau, 72, returns to Milan until May 11 at Spazio Roseto in Corso Garibaldi 95 with the exhibition "CORPO non CORPO", curated by Milo Goj with a critical text in the catalogue by Lóránd Hegyi. An exhibition organized by Art Relation and promoted by Roseto and Jarvés on the occasion of Milan Design Week 2025: fifteen large-format canvases and two videos, one of which unpublished, which celebrate the union between the body of painting and the non-body of the immaterial.
"I agreed to do this exhibition even though I realized I was painting in a moment of great suffering ," says Garau, whose career has included solo shows in Lugano, Lausanne, Barcelona, San Francisco, Washington, Strasbourg, London, two appearances at the Venice Art Biennale, in 2003 and 2011, and exhibitions in museums in Saint-Étienne, Cordoba, Brasilia, San Paolo, Montevideo. "Today, producing art is like arming yourself and going to war. It is impossible to ignore everything that surrounds us ."
Hence the birth of the formula body non body , a narrative on presence and absence, on the visible and the indefinite, a theme already anticipated by Garau in his first solo show at Cannaviello in 1984. Forty years later that oxymoron returns in a new poetic form where the separation between what can be touched and what cannot be seen dissolves : «I feel that man today is giving too much importance to the physical body while the other half of which we are composed is abandoned, is left dormant. But if we leave out the most intimate and spiritual part we lose humanity and are destined to become robots».
Humanity, on the other hand, is facing an unprecedented revolution, with technology and artificial intelligence dominating every aspect of our lives: "We have been saying for years that the advent of artificial intelligence will be a great novelty, but I think that if it gives us ten, it takes away a hundred. It is the greatest thief of humanity, because it sucks all our mental capacity. And the less the brain works, the weaker it becomes. Imagination is power ."
The tangible part of the exhibition is represented by the fifteen works on canvas and recycled PVC tarpaulins from disused advertisements , dominated above all by green and sacred purple. The immaterial part, on the other hand, is an absolute novelty, entitled Self-portrait of 2022. A video that lasts just over twenty seconds and takes up the concept of invisible work for which «I have been attacked, even heavily. Luckily I have a lead armor that never ends. The truth is that I know that those people who criticized me had a moment of panic. I realize that nothingness and emptiness, the material I used for my immaterial works, provoke a sardonic laugh. Horror vacui is scary. Yet we come from the void and we will return to the void ».
In Self-Portrait the artist presents his own self-portrait to the viewer : «The sculpture you don't see here is my self-portrait», he says, caressing the air: « I assure you that one day, when I'm gone, we will be identical, like two drops of water».
"Usually it is the artist who copies the model - explains Garau - but this time it will be the model who imitates the artist, surpassing him . I admit that it almost created a feeling of jealousy in me, a beautiful jealousy: "It will be seen, I said to myself, that my copy will create a work superior to the one I conceived". I believe with this work I have touched the maximum point of existence and non-existence. As I wrote in the manifesto, the visionary nature of art has no boundaries ".
Just as the role that the artist must have has no boundaries, according to Garau, in the front line in the defense of the landscape: « We have the duty to be aggressive and united in the face of such a devastating power as that of wind and photovoltaic energy in Sardinia. Companies come and go, business grows and declines but millions of cubic meters of concrete will remain there forever and we will have to keep this scrap metal to rust. All this for what? For a little energy, so-called green, which creates a void around. Not to mention that we are talking about a system already considered obsolete . For Sardinia, a mockery in all respects».