Sergio Sarri, Turin 1938

The work of the Italian contemporary artist Sergio Sarri centres on the relationship of man and machine. Sarri studied painting in Bern, Switzerland and then in Paris in the late 1950s, and following a trip to the United States in 1965, his work began to explore the connections between humanity and technology which have remained the dominant theme of his career. In his sleekly stylised canvases, Sarri collages fragmented elements both human and mechanical into dark, often erotic fantasies reminiscent of 1920s cinema, such as Fritz Lang’s Metropolis and Robert Wiene’s Cabinet of Dr Caligari. A surrealist spirit infuses these futuristic visions, which are rendered with the hard edge and often bright colours of Pop art, evoking cruel parallel worlds in which man has become subordinate to the machines they themselves created. Sarri has also made forays into experimental cinema, and at the end of the 1980s began publishing comics in Italian and international publications, signing himself as “SeSar”.