The term Sottorealism (''sotto'' Italian for “beneath” or “under” and the Latin ''realis'' “concerning the thing;” ''res'' “thing, object”) describes an approach in contemporary aesthetics. It has been developed with respect to painting, but also applies to photography

History

The American art historian

Carol Strickland Carol Ann Colclough Strickland (born 1946) is an American art historian who currently resides in New York City. Strickland graduated from Rhodes College in Memphis (Tennessee) in 1968. She studied English literature and earned a PhD from the Un ...

(born 1946) coined the term Sottorealism in an essay titled “Detour as a Route to Unity and Order” (2006). In the essay, she was concerned with the art work of the German-Greek painter

Aris Kalaizis Aris Kalaizis ( gr, Άρης Καλαϊζής, born 1966 in Leipzig) is a figurative Greek-German painter. He is associated with the New Leipzig School. Art price of German Volks- und Raiffeisenbanken. Biography Aris Kalaizis grew up, as the so ...

. While approaching his work, Strickland discovered a hermeneutical void between realism and surrealism, which she filled with the neologism.

Concept

Instead of painting a surreal universe, the Sottorealist is interested in crawling beneath the surface of reality. While the world of the dream isn’t a creative act, and while no photographic device is able to fully mediate that which is beyond reality, the Sottorealist acknowledges that which is given in reality. In doing so, the Sottorealist, however, also acknowledges that unseen forces are active in our perception of reality, such as memory or cultural frameworks or metaphysical. By making these numinous realities present in his work, he creates a convergence of the seen and unseen. The idea is to go beyond the appearance of things and to uncover substructures that are beyond the empirical reality. Sottorealists approach these second or third orders of reality by constructing elaborate models. These models could be viewed as experiments that are necessary in order to sound out the full scope of that which is part of reality, even though it is not an apparent and visible part of it.

Process

Building models of that which to be painted, is an essential part in the process. These models can be erected in public spaces or in an atelier. They offer an opportunity to probe that which the artist feels to have unearthed from beneath the surface of reality. These models can also range in complexity, be very elaborate or very simple. Photographic images taken while this model is set up, aid the artist during the final realization of the painting. Aris Kalaizis was the first painter who has made use of this concept, when preparing his paintings.

Proponents

Prominent Sottorealists are the Canadian photographer

Jeff Wall Jeffrey Wall, Order of Canada, OC, Royal Society of Canada, RSA (born September 29, 1946) is a Canadian artist best known for his large-scale back-lit Cibachrome photographs and art history writing. Early in his career, he helped define the Van ...

, the Finnish photographer Ilkka Halso, as well as the American

Gregory Crewdson Gregory Crewdson (born September 26, 1962) is an American photographer. He photographs tableaux of American homes and neighborhoods. Life and career Crewdson was born in the Park Slope neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York. He attended John Dewey ...

.Stephan Berg: Gregory Crewdson 1985–2005 Hatje Cantz, Ostfildern-Ruit 2005

Literature

* Carol Strickland, Detour as a Route to Unity and Order, in: Rubbacord, Bielefeld 2006 S. 9-13. *

Paul-Henri Campbell Paul-Henri Campbell (born 1982) is a German-American author. He is a bilingual author of poetry and prose in English and German. He studied classical philology, with a concentration on ancient Greek, as well as Catholic theology at the National U ...

(ed.), Sottorealism, Petersberg 2013.

References

{{reflist Theories of aesthetics Realism (art movement)