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 concerning 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 U ...

(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 artwork of the German-Greek painter Aris Kalaizis. While approaching his work, Strickland discovered a hermeneutical void between realism and surrealism, which she filled with 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 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 are to be painted is an essential part of the process. These models can be erected in public spaces or 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 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 photographer. He is artist best known for his large-scale back-lit Cibachrome photographs and art history writing. Early in his career, he h ...

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

Gregory Crewdson Gregory Crewdson (born September 26, 1962) is an American photographer who makes large-scale, cinematic, psychologically charged prints of staged scenes set in suburban landscapes and interiors. He directs a large production and lighting crew to ...

.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 (birth name: Christopher Paul-Henri Campbell; born 1982 in Boston, Massachusetts) is a German- American author. He writes in English and German. He studied classical philology (Ancient Greek) and Catholic theology at the Na ...

(ed.), Sottorealism, Petersberg 2013.

References

{{reflist Theories of aesthetics Realism (art movement)