I used to be very uncomfortable calling myself an artist, because I thought it was qualitative, not just a generic title.
– John Baldessari*
I fully agree with his words, and especially nowadays, I feel that the words “Art” and “Artist” have been overused and abused.
Because my works always result from a logical and rational process, and to avoid further confusion, I prefer to use the title “visual designer” for now.
*”John Baldessari: An interview”, in Marcia Tucker, John Baldessari (The New Museum, NYC 1981)
Data
SerraGlia [ˈsɛʀɑ jɑː].
Architect, visual artist* designer.
Born 1979, Pesaro (Italy).
Lives and works in Helsinki, Finland (2009 to the present).
Bio
SerraGlia is the alias of Italian architect and visual artist* designer Lorenzo Servi (born 1979).
Through painting graffiti, SerraGlia first discovered cities and their untapped visual environment. Having finished a master’s in architecture (2008, University of Florence), he focused his interest on the intersection of photography, visual arts and communication. In 2010 he founded LUMART, an architectural visualization studio based in Helsinki.
Parallel to his commissioned works, SerraGlia is constantly researching and analyzing issues in everyday life and built environments, then using them as the basis for creating self-initiated projects documented through photography, video and publications.
Inspired by the ‘readymade’ and situationist movements, the core of his work is in transforming the banal into the extraordinary and the unseen into things to admire. His photo-based and publications projects sit between the domains of reality and fiction.
Using art as a medium for conveying ideas and questioning the meaning of art itself, SerraGlia aims to shake the viewer’s gaze from its everyday fog: to make people wonder, to inspire them to search for meanings and to show alternative points of view of our ‘reality’.
As part of his artistic practice, he is interested in how to make contemporary art more accessible to everyone. This led him to found the Imagined Museum of Contemporary Art, publishing the book “Art Is Everywhere” (BIS Publishers) and holding workshops in schools and museums.
Since 2017, he has used books as the principal format of his work. Other Editions is his place where to explore and experiment with the book format.
His works have been a part of several solo and group exhibitions in Finland and abroad, including The Finnish Museum of Photography and Galleria Heino.
1-Min Intro
Areas of Interests
Built-environments
Urban Readymades
Urban quotidian
The overlooked
Domestic places
Relationship-between-images-words-language
Relationship-between-art-and-viewer
Connecting-visual-arts-with-non-arts-experts
Series-of-images
Printed-matter
Humor and art
Member of
MUU artists’ association, Finland
The Union of Artist Photographers, Finland
Grafia – Association of Visual Communication Designers in Finland
Grants
Kone Foundation, artistic/publishing research (2023–2024)
Grafia, grant for book productions (2022)
VISEK, Centre for the Promotion of Visual Art (2017)
TAIKE, The Arts Promotion Centre Finland (2017)
Works in collections
State Art Deposit Collection (Finland)
HUS Art Collection (Finland)
Heino Art Foundation (Finland)
Private collections in Italy, Belgium and Finland.
Articles/Interviews
Mag Culture
ViD #3
Frizzifrizzi (In Italian)
Introduction @ West Carrollton High School, Ohio
Minimalissimo
PIG Magazine N. 34 (interview in Italian)
World Architects
Designboom
A complete portfolio/CV is available on request.