the black snapper

Steve Sabella’s art has been exploring since the mid 1990’s notions of imagined cities, hyperrealties and the relationship of the subconscious mind with reality. Having realized that Jerusalem, Sabella’s city of birth no more exists, he started perceiving the harsh reality of living in ‘exile’ or in alienation.

After conceiving the project jerusalem in exile, Sabella explores through the use of the human body (the hands artwork) what he now refers to as ‘exilic landscapes’.

In an attempt to exit his reality, these landscapes were early signs of Sabella’s distorted perception of life as in 2008 through fragmentations of images, he deconstructs his immediate monotonous surroundings and reconstructs them to mirror the State of Mind of living in exile and alienation in exile. He does this by assembling hundreds of window images until a ‘new form’ or ‘impossible reality’ is created.

Artist Statement to In Exile The keywords for my work are ‘disorientation’ and ‘dislocation’. The latter should be understood in terms of disorder, disturbance and confusion. Living in a constant state of ‘mental exile,’ I have become more conscious that the state of fragmentation and alienation I have been going through can never turn into a whole or take me back to a fixed point of ‘origin.’

Consequently, the work is showing ’states of mind’. I am assembling my own constructions—creating a new structure or a new ‘impossible reality’ of common shapes and forms that exist in my immediate monotonous surroundings. However, I am not sure whether my ambivalent reconstructions are making the world or my perception of it any simpler.”