Monk

Born in 1958 A Biancavilla, a Sicilian town on the slopes of Etna, Vincent Sangiorgio obtained his diploma of Master of Arts at the Institute of Art in Catania, and soon began traveling Europe between France, Germany, Holland and England. In the 80s he returned to Italy and worked in the fashion industry in Milan, devoting himself to the creation of leather accessories. In the 90s, after a short stay in New York, he returned to Italy and took part in a fresco course in Venice and began to focus on the creation of artistic parietal interiors in public and private premises between Milan and Turin. In the 2000s he took over and began the restoration of the Chapel of the Immaculate in the Capizzi College of Bronte (CT) and the theater of the Bellini theater in Adrano (CT), over private Sicilian baroque buildings. In the course of all these years of immense work, he cultivated his personal research as a figurative / abstract artist, and using the professional name Monk, he created a remarkable and vast production of works experimenting with the technique of wood inlay which he calls “inlay in relief ” while participating in various collective and personal exhibitions. In 2007, under the patronage of the Municipality of Taormina (ME), he set up an important personal exhibition at the deconsecrated church of S. Francesco di Paola, a very prestigious place for art, used by the Municipality only for important art events and historical artists such as Mirò and Andy Warhol. In 2013 he took part in two calls: the Competition for the realization of the work of art to be realized in the new multi-purpose center of Pinzolo (TN) and the Competition for the work of art to be realized for the embellishment of the new youth hostel in Borgo Valsugana (TN). Placing among the top three in both races, and obtaining the prize of “Meritorious Project”. Today Sangiorgio lives and works in Brianza while continuing his artistic career, constantly looking new ways to express himself.

Critical note by Dr. Caterina Di Giacomo, critic and art curator: “The cultural matrix of Vince” MONK “Sangiorgio recognizes itself in the aspiration of postmodern tendencies to overcome the cold cultural detachment, absorbed in the design processes by the objective values of Opera. In fact, the artifact is in itself the product of a technical skill that has absorbed aesthetic lessons of the most varied, mostly marked by what is now termed an Italian term Genius loci, the ultimate goal of his artistic operation. It is the stamp of the applications that the creations of Sangiorgio find in the field of furniture and decoration almost “toys for adults”, with the shrewd sense of an irony that is at the base of its creations. The joyful and playful spirit, the technical versatility are the technical characteristics that distinguish the Art of Sangiorgio, at the base of the wood inlays to the pittosculptures that characterize part of the artist’s production, it seems curiously to oversee a path of interest in the paradigms of the second futurism one thinks above all of Depero’s pictorial decompositions of Segantini’s divisional influences, of the furniture created by Giacomo Balla and of Dada’s desecrating inventiveness and of the Pop phenomenon. An inspiration that however is also recomposed in the fertile poetics of Sangiorgio in the registers of an ancestral classicism. “

Below critical note by Rossella Savarese

Sicilian origins, it was born in 1958 in Biancavilla, a town on the slopes of Etna. After obtaining his diploma as a Master of Art at the State Art Institute of Catania, he began to travel the world on repeated trips between Europe and the United States.

During his artistic training he experiments and perfects the technique of inlay in wood which he calls “relief inlay”, giving rise to complex works resulting from an intense design phase. At the same time he cultivated his great passion for music, preferring an instrument in his studies: the saxophone, whose echo can be found in several works. In some formally manifesting, in others as an under trace, inspiring muse and generator of dedicated cycles. On closer inspection, Monk’s works are placed on a thin border line, having to define them necessarily is the solution of “picto-sculptures” convincing and sudden: wooden dowels, manually carved and assembled. The results are heterogeneous, ranging from works with a clear figurative structure (in which the artist through a preparatory project, more often than not, tells us about the same subject part of a cycle) to others of an abstract-informal matrix, more instinctive.

I choose the opera “Cosmic love”, for various reasons, but I try to summarize two.

First for the interesting structural grid: lines, full and empty, chromatic passages and shapes are harmoniously balanced, accompanying the user in an eurythmic decoding. The second reason is the return in this work of a complex theme dear to the author: creation.

Life, symbolically represented by a female figure, emerges from the waters placing itself in connection with the planets giving rise to a love of cosmic nature. In his artistic career Monk develops and develops universal themes, including man’s connection with nature. This work summarizes the need and urgency of a possible cosmic balance. Made in mature age, it emphasizes the ridge that separates the author’s intention from the final result as a consequence of infinite factors and contingencies. Several times, during our chats, Monk recalls the centrality of the case in his artistic making, from an initial idea the work takes its form, acquiring unprecedented nuances and results.

The technique foresees the use of acrylic paint on wood. As mentioned, the individual pieces are carved and assembled by the artist, a singular artifact in which the repeated and constant playful aspect also leaves room for a careful formal and structural analysis. Monk makes the avant-garde lesson his own, recognizes in his work a futurist component with which he weaves a dialogue, giving rise to a contemporary work in which the dictates of Balla and Depero act as a solid basis for a completely personal and unique discourse.

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