Antonio Saba’s ONEIRISM photo exhibition for the first time in Dubai.
Opening on January 25th 2023 at 6:30pm, at EMAAR’s art gallery Foundry Downtown, the exhibition consists in 16 large photography artworks, depicting the imaginary world of the Artist through the tecnique of Staged Photography, or Tableau Vivant.
From the curator Rosa Cascone: “The artworks exhibited here come from the fantastic and dreamy world imagined by the creative mind of Antonio and captured by his camera. By emphasising aesthetics, he seduces the viewer into a world of ongoing equilibrium and the interval that articulates the stream of events. Moments are depicted that only exist to punctuate the stillness of the scene in order to clarify our existence and to find poetic meaning in our life. The inherent visual seductiveness, along with the conciseness of the exhibitions, express a symbolic and structured image: everything has a role.
With his photographs indeed he seems to obsessively try to capture two opposites: reality and the world of the imagination. His practice lies precisely in locking these visions within a shared and recognised imaginary, also in the choice of magnificent locations, but in a surrealist and visionary way.”
The Director of the Italian Cultural Institute, Ida Zilio-Grandi, states in her foreword to the catalogue:
‘According to a well-known Sardinian saying, assiduous work conquers all things (‘trabagliu continuu binchet ogni cosa’), and this, in my view, applies perfectly to the more than 30 years of persevering work of Antonio Saba, a native of the Sardinian city of Cagliari.
First and foremost, Saba’s shots successfully defeat the imperfection of reality as it appears to those who live it […]. This artist’s photographs, those directly driven by his visionary personality but often also the ones commissioned for advertising purposes, go far beyond, because they create a reality that would never exist in that way or any other and that slowly but openly challenges the viewer to discover its symbols and even more its contradictions.
[…] In this victory over contradiction, Antonio Saba accomplishes something that only authentic poets know how to do well, and only the most versed among them know how to translate into beauty. His pictures are often true oxymorons, disturbing the mind like Horace’s strenuous inertia or Giovanni Pascoli’s tacit tumult, or the eloquent silence, or the half-snow, half-fire angel of traditional Islamic literature […]
Victory of beauty over the unpredictable and victory of beauty over the incongruent, then; in addition, victory through irony over the melancholy and severity that characterise the works of so many contemporary photographers. That same irony in which José Ortega y Gasset identified the salvation of art and the only way to keep it human, finally declaring that the most intense artistic expression is farce; and, to quote an Italian, it is no coincidence that the brilliant Luigi Pirandello spoke of humour as the ‘feeling of the contrary’.
The exhibition made under the auspices of the Embassy of Italy in the UAE and in collaboration with the Italian Institute of Culture of Abu Dhabi, will stay on til February 23 2023.
BIO
Antonio Saba was born in Sardinia, Italy and currently lives and works in Dubai.In his 30+ years career has travelled the world shooting advertising and editorial photography for the most prestigious international Luxury hospitality brands and magazines.
Most recent exhibitions and awards
In 2022 his picture The Raven of Corrasi is selected and awarded at the International Photography Awards di New York.
In 2019 Antonio Saba got 4 honourable mentions for his pictures: The Tower of Babel, The woman and the catfish at the gIngerbread house, the Ballerina’s rehearsal, An Ordinary day at Miramare. in the category fine arts at the International Photography Awards in New York.
In December 2017 the Civic Museums of Cagliari, Italy have acquired and displayed in their permanent collection three fine art Photographs by Antonio Saba.
Antonio Saba. Oneirism, Dreamscapes in Exhibition, Bangkok, River City Bangkok Photographer’s Gallery, November 2018 to January 2019. And from October to November 2019.
Tokyo Landscape, official event at “Festival del Film di Roma 2010” exhibited at The Museum of Modern Art “ Carlo Bilotti” in Rome.