Santos, Brazil, 1995. – Lives and works in São Paulo, Brazil.
PIPA 2021 nominee.
PIPA 2021 Selected Artist.
Ilê Sartuzi is an artist graduated from the University of São Paulo (USP). His research involves sculptural objects, mapped video projections, installations and theatrical plays addressing issues related to the idealized image of the body, often fragmented or constructed from different parts; but also the absence of this figure in proto-architectural and digital spaces. The interest in the dramatic arts in recent years has given a theatricality to objects and installations that are animated by mechanical movements and interpret dramaturgy and choreographies. Repetition is recurrent either as a constructive element of modular objects, a cyclic structure, or as a dramaturgical strategy.
Participated in exhibitions at institutions such as Videobrasil (2021); Bienal SUR (2021); Homeostasis Lab (2021); Instituto Moreira Salles (2020); SESC (Ribeirão Preto, 2019; Distrito Federal, 2018); CCSP – Centro Cultural São Paulo (2018); MAC-USP Museu de Arte Contemporânea (2017); Museu de Arte de Ribeirão Preto (2020; 2017; 2015); Centro Universitário Maria Antônia (2019); Galeria Vermelho (2017; 2018, 2019); the three in collaboration with the research group After the End of Art, which he has been part of since 2015. He presented theatrical plays, performing mapped video projections in spaces such as Oficina Oswald de Andrade (2018, 2020); Itaú Cultural (2019); Container Theater (2019) and at TUSP (2019). Working for more than a year on a specific project, he premiered his play without actors “hollow head doll’s foam” at Firma (São Paulo, 2019). He received the PIPA Award in 2021.
Closer to PIPA
Closer to PIPA: the artist speaks in the Institute’s collection
“Worstward Ho!”
2020, 06’50”, text: Samuel Beckett, rendering: Miro Bersi, soundtrack: Bruno Palazzo
Commissioned by Instituto Moreira Salles, the video “Worstward Ho!” starts from the homonymous text by Samuel Beckett, published in 1983. Images, text and soundtrack overlap to create a continuous path inside an apartment reconstructed through the process of photogrammetry. The disembodied camera slides, in its slow and continuous movement, through space and out of it and back in again. With the rhythmic cadence typical of Beckett’s texts, the voice accompanies the video in this dilated and dynamic time, which confuses “real” and “digital” spaces or a possible mental place, closed in on itself.
This work, that was shown for the first time in the context of “Programa Convida” from Instituto Moreira Salles, will still integrate this year the 15ª Bienal de Artes Mediales de Santiago, in Chile. Now, the work is part of PIPA Institute’s collection.
“Queda”
2021, HD video, color, sound, 12’20’’
A video made with 3D animation in which a kind of skin falls on a surface. Repeating this same action from different positions, the impact calculation of these two materials generate different deformations on these skins. The work brings closer two distinct characteristics of the artist’s work: the latex skins and the research on digital simulations. The work was shown for the first time in the solo show “A. E A de novo.” at the auroras, in São Paulo. On that occasion, the video was installed inside the house’s fireplace, which occupies the center of the main exhibition space.
“Vedetes”
2017, latex mask, support, servomotor, arduino, projector, variable dimensions – in partnership with the AMUDI group from USP’s Escola Politécnica
“Vedetes” is the first work in which Ilê Sartuzi uses microcontrollers to move objects. In the artwork, the mouth of a latex mask is articulated by a random mechanical movement out of sync in relation to the images projected on this same mouth. What is at stake are a series of surface logics – be it on the thin mask or on the projection that touches this skin, or even the content of these images. The mouths are from scenes of international and national cinema vedettes, and the seduction of the observer with the consumed images of these figures (of their lips and their charm in front of the cameras) is out of step with the deformations caused by the repetitive maquinal movement.
“Sem título (videogame Glitch)”
2018-2019, HD video, color and sound, 05’46’’
The video investigates the flaws (glitches) of videogames from images appropriated from the internet. Divided in two parts, the first one investigates flaws related to the structuring of bodies within the virtual world system. These glitches alter the stablished order and the normal functioning of things, transforming, in some cases, the apparent three-dimensionality that structures this world, revealing the flat two-dimensionality of the image. In this sense, research on the image of bodies continues to deepen in another representative field. The investigations that moved between the sculptural body and the painted image enter the digital world as a way to unravel the construction – and here the constructive aspect must be taken into account – of fragmented and sometimes monstrous bodies.
The second part of the video explores the possibilities of a player using a glitch for their advantage in a way that was not intended by the designers of the system, which is identified on videogames as an exploit. Therefore, the understanding of acting through loopholes is broadened (an idea so dear to some contemporary philosophers such as Alain Badiou). By understanding the mechanisms of the system and its failures, the subject can intervene more powerfully in complex structures through these openings.
Video