I AM GUALTI
Portrait of GUALTI with jewel... Photo by Gino Di Paolo ( Archivio storico De Domizio Durini )
• • • • • • • • • •
My name is Gualtiero Salbego but in art I am GUALTI.
I am fifty-one years old ( December 18, 1972 ) and I am originally from a small country town in the province of Padua.
I moved to Venice and I opened my little studio-gallery in September 13, 1998.
I am a self-taught, I could define myself as an “experimenter of matter”, an inventor of decorative shapes for the body.
I create contemporary jewellery and textile adornments.
My shop is an entirely white space, a kind of limbo, a small “Wunderkammer” where unusual creations are arranged in a balancing act in a harmony of colours and forms sometimes suspended in mid-air as if they were an art installation.
It’s a real place of alchemy where, surrounded by a rarefied atmosphere almost suspended in time, emerge my spectacular wearable sculptures.
In this “emotional space” you get inebriated by balsamic essences and enveloping musical sounds that capture the senses, accompanyng your gaze in the discovery of my “creatures”.
From a young age I always had strong skills in the arts. I strongly felt the need to express a creative ferment that came from within and so I was alwais frantically looking for tools that allowed me to materialize my emotions. The grandeur of nature and rural place of my adolescence have a strong influence on my creative evolution. I stayed hours and hours admiring the flowing water of small streams in this various games and kaleidoscopic reflections, and watched the floating dances of sinuous silver aquatic algae immersed and sospende in that mysterious cristalline surface…their harmonious movement anchanted my eyes.
I examined with much attention the delicate vegetative germinations of plants and scrutinezed every detail of tiny teeming creatures and their interactionn with the phsycal environment around them. I’ve always been particularly attracted to all that is below the surface : small fossils, branched of shrubs, stones, and above all roots…, tangled, woody, branched, fibrous, tuberiform, sometimes aerial or creeping.
From this crossroads of interests, visions and emotions comes my creative adventure, a kind of esoteric watermark that today is expressed and materialized with the sedimentation of the past and the cultural influences of the present, as “roots that emerge from the depths”.
When I create my jewellery I use many materials by mixing them with each other through experimental techniques. I have a predilection for transparent and flexible materials such as nylon that transform and mix with fusions of synthetic resins and flashes of iridescent aluminium, but also acrylic elements, glass balls, crystals beads and anything else that is necessary to realize my spectacular ornaments.
My jewels are seemingly fragile but actually are feather-light and easy to wear.
Glassy hearts pulsating with light like watery mirrors, from which transparent filaments and iridescent tips reach out offshoots of light. The pins rest on shoulders like fanciful flowers just blossomed…the pendants caress necklines like shimmering drops of water…the swirls of vibrant filaments encircle necks like sparkling rings of pearly dew…rigid chokers shoot forth long and sinuous pistils like exotic tropical blooms blowing in a sea breeze… Bracelets, rings, earrings, brooches, collars, headpieces…the entire body is willingly captured, dressed, and tranformed by these organic sculpture-jewels which I like to call “extensions of the soul”.
They are indefinable architectures, timeless in alternating lights, shadows, colours, volumes, asymmetries and movements.
But in my creative universe I also love to manipulate fabrics to create unusual jackets, stoles and scarves with organza, taffeta, satin, wooll…and anything else that can be wrapped around the body like a chrysalis cocoon. Plated iridescent fabrics crumples surprisingly, enchanced by voluminous sinuous hems that form spirals evoking diaphanous creatures of inexplored abysses.
I transform my deepest emotions , my dreams, my fantasies and my desires into ornaments for the body and soul…a sort of perpetual voyage in time and space, where there is no beginning and no end, but rather a continual evolution that seeks and affirm my sensations.
The invisible sides within me can become visible.
• • • • • • • • • •
♥
Follow me on Facebook :
https://www.facebook.com/gualti.venezia/
♥
For any inquiries please feel free to contact me through the contacts page
or email me at [email protected]
♥
• • • • • • • • • •
Photos by Giorgio Ricci - Model : Romina Salvadori
• • • • • • • • • •