Biography

Emanuele Sturlese aka Discordant was born in Spezia (better known as La Spezia, less known as Spiceville) on November 27th 1984 under the sign of Sagittarius. Attending a Graphic Design course he fell in love with creative writing, contemporary art and subsequently enrolled himself in DAMS – School of Arts of Bologna where he’s been living for six months. In the Emilian capital he found an artistically stimulating environment, and during his time there he has produced several collages on many different surfaces and supports. Then he started attending the Academy of Beaux Arts of Carrara, where he developed a passion for photography - especially of abandoned places and dehumanized individuals – and graduated with the highest marks with a thesis about underground artist Prof. Bad Trip (www.profbadtrip.org). He currently lives in Berlin.
Together with friend Sara Pili he did a two week display at the ARCI circle of San Terenzo (province of La Spezia) and his pictures have been projected at the In Pixels We Trust one-night (Piacenza, February 2007). One of his pictures was named “picture of the month” and published on information and culture magazine Ergo Sum.
On March 2007 he participated to collective exhibition Multisensorial Lab N°3 @ cultural association Kollatino Underground (Rome) where he met Giorgio Nerone who would use one of his shots for the cover of culture magazine LAB’s zero issue.
The same year, on March he displayed his photos at 107, an illegal happening in an abandoned factory in Milan.
On May 2007 inside the RDA May Day of La Spezia he organized the first edition of INNER VISIONS, an event featuring tekno music and photo projections.
On May 2007 he displayed his pictures at the first edition of La Roboterie (www.myspace.com/laroboterie) @ Galleria dei Serpenti, Rome.
On July 2007 together with Sara Pili (www.flickr.com/suleika) he did a two week display @ Kino High End, Tacheles (Berlin) whose finissage featured a live gig by OvO (www.myspace.com/ovo).
From September 16th to 26th he displayed his pictures @ Portrait Cafè (La Spezia). On February 2008 he did a two-week display @ book/sexy shop Betty Books (Bologna) (www.betty-books.com). On March 2008 he did a display @ alternative queer bar Barbie Deinhoff’s (Berlin) (www.myspace.com/barbiedeinhoffs), on November 2008 @ MonoBar (Milan) (www.myspace.com/monomilano). Those five exhibitions took the name of Inner Visions., whose vernissage featured dj/live sets of Danish artist Nikolaj Tange Lange (www.myspace.com/nikolajlange) or Pablito el drito (www.myspace.com/pablito_el_drito).
On November 2007 he displayed his pictures at Kindergarten Art Show in a Berlin squat.
On January 2008, with the collaboration of stylist Chiara Brunet he makes a fairy tales-inspired fashion shooting.
He did artworks for the new EP of Sig. Sapio, all-around musician from Grosseto (Italy) (www.myspace.com/sigsapio) and first album of electro-punk Tuscanian duo Sex:e:reve, (www.myspace.com/sexereve). He did promotional shoots for experimental/breakbeat project Fernando Poo (www.myspace.com/fernandopoo), DJ Mr.Ties (www.myspace.com/mrties), PastedMinds (www.myspace.com/pastedminds) and Action Recyclage (www.myspace.com/actionrecyclage).
He also did reports for Italian queer parties LaRoboterie (www.myspace.com/laroboterie) and CarniScelte (www.myspace.com/carniscelte).
He’s currently making photosets for Berlin parties Sabot°age Berlin (www.sabotage-berlin.com, www.myspace.com/sabotageberlin) and Attenti alla puttana santa (www.myspace.com/annabolena, http://idroscalodigitale.blogspot.com).
Other than photography, he loves drawing distractions.

CONTACT:
discordantblackstar@libero.it
WEBSITE:
www.flickr.com/discordantblackstar
www.myspace.com/0discordant

INNER VISIONS
Inner Visions was initially the name of an event which took place on May 2007 in a social centre of La Spezia (Italy), featuring photo-projections from several up-and-coming Italian artists and tekno music. After such an innovative, positive experience Emanuele Sturlese a.k.a. Discordant renames Inner Visions his own personal photo exhibitions in several cities like Milan, Bologna and Berlin.
The leit-motif of his works is personality, identity-devoid anthropomorphic presences roaming around in timeless, sometimes destroyed, sometimes aseptic environments. Antigas masks, flashy Xs hiding faces and feelings of human puppets living in temporarily autonomous zones, irrecognisable zones telling stories of distant, future ages. The artist gives birth to crystallized puppets, trapped in wasted lands from indefinite ages. Noxious air, claustrophobia in an attempt to daze the spectator, trapping him in a world smelling like cheap perfume and metal. Rust and smeared make-up, flashy clothes and dust coexisting in a strident, surreal context. Love for decontextualisation pushes the artist to portray female characters in forgotten places, starving bodies thrown in a unexplored, abandoned universe.

In this age of rehashed motifs and overused signs, young photographer Emanuele Sturlese a.k.a. Discordant is showing with determination how can we find constantly expanding spaces.
With humble creativity and suggestive brilliance, the artist finds himself in tension between pictorial ravine and photographical and photographic datum.
Between figurative and still life.
Between the stasis of an industrial landscape and the aseptic aesthetics of bodies in motion.
Never decadent, never glossy, never , never pandering.
Ethereal and polished;
Disruptive and strong.
Politically out of line.
Politically incorrect, without rhetorics.
Through codes in free fall, towards a disciplined, rigorous candour.

Antonella Pintus
annabolena@tin.it
6/4/09

With wet hair sticking to his forehead.
Emanuele has huge, probing eyes, the only things rising from those pinched knees covering his nestled mouth.
Emanuele stares at the world from a bath.

Emanuele Sturlese reads, listens, travels and reassembles.
He doesn’t pass by, he torments contexts with a caress.
Emanuele Sturlense grows up and Becomes Discordant, claustrophobically floating behind his pictures , portraying works of industrial death.
Over the fluo pvc texture of his dj-setting gals. Emanuele carves the inevitably decadent scenario of split-ended urban fringes with adhesive X-shaped gum sheets, luckily distant from disastrous post-industrial restyling. Recovering crumbling factories. Emanuele turns them into the projected skeleton of surreal internal-eyed puppets living in the atemporality portrayed by the electric eye.
Discordant is alive, playing with obsessions, forging his subjects in the blink of a mechanical eye then leaving them without their puppeteer, back to the nail of breathless impersonality .
Discordant gathers his anaerobic toys and portrays them, turns them into Inner Visions.
He takes them out at night then keeps them by his side, in his constant shuttling between Italy and Berlin.

Discordant hides the stink of surreal toxicity, his takes on the barest, most irritating reality.

Discordant looks between the gaps, beyond the blanket of mites, below the dust.
He swims in seas of metal and lead.
He makes up eyes with rust.
He’s touching in his own slaughtering way.
With perfect breasts and unexpected cuddles, without altars.
Discordant shoots with feathers,
He is the tickling on your nose while you light up a fag.
Without knowing what time is it.
He gives the harsh smell of disrespectful wits,
Quite not like photographers.

Arianna Milesi - curator