Whether it is sculpting, painting, photography, design or fashion, even if someone once said that “the medium is the message”, within an artistic production there can often be a tendency towards a specific narrative, which is visceral and detached from the media that is used to express it. Stefano Ogliari Badessi (S.O.B.), opens up a world of joint ventures and collective collaborations, whilst always gravitating around the themes of nomadism and strayness.
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Born in Crema (Italy) in 1984, S.O.B. was formed at the “Brera Fine Arts Academy” in Milano, and spent a year studying at the Fine Arts Academy in Seville, before developing an interest towards the appliance of his aesthetic to a wide range of other contexts and media. Having collaborated with a variety of photographers, architects, designers and fashion brands, S.O.B. has fed his over-spilling creative hunger by implementing joint ventures with a number of famous brands, like, for instance, Aspesi and Swatch, or even collaborating with important entrepreneurial figures like the one of François-Henri Pinault, whilst always aiming to enhance new creative solutions.
Besides all of the aspects concerning S.O.B.’s maturity in terms of finding more and more ways to communicate his expressive outputs, an interesting focus could be made on the themes that accompany the artist throughout all of his body of work. It is in fact to be said, that even if Stefano Ogliari Badessi often changes his visual language and experiments with a vast range of media and materials, the key-point of all of his artistic production can be found in the narrative of “nomadism”, a nomadic feeling and nomadic meaning which permeates and contaminates all of his visual outputs. Whether S.O.B. creates gigantic inflatable balloons or Buddha heads, which when deflated could fit in a common hand luggage, or massive colourful sculptures equipped with wheels, which could be towed and moved around by a bicycle, or even when the artist is producing what he likes to call “portable miniatures of mini-worlds… postcards”, his creative interest and focus are directed towards the nomadic and stray existence of his subjects.
“I made the mini little worlds when I lived in Shanghai and for a while my studio was the bunk-bed of my hostel, so I adapted to small dimensions. Then I started making balloons but even those, despite being giants, once deflated can fit in a suitcase, some even in a trolley (like the Buddha's head for example). Other sculptures, such as the monsters or the toucan, are not removable but have wheels and are still nomadic by nature so that I can make them travel by towing a bicycle”.
Most of the times it is the medium, but other times it may be the message that holds together the whole body of work of an artist. Whether S.O.B. focuses on a subject or another, whether it is a sculpture, a brand collaboration or a photographic memory brought by a postcard, the cause and the meaning of S.O.B.’s works finds itself always to be driven by a need towards travelling and its nomadic essence. Embracing strayness as a way to continuously discover our perceptive surroundings.
Do not miss S.O.B.'s latest exhibition at MINIARTEXTIL, Como (Italy) and his workshop at Guggenheim Venice!
