Simard Bilodeau Contemporary is pleased to present The Sanctity of Desire, a solo exhibition by Venice, Italy based painter Saturno Butto (b. 1957, Venice, Italy).
This exhibition is a retrospective, containing works from the past two decades until the present. To examine Butto’s oeuvre is to examine the inner workings of desire, a common thread woven throughout all his work. Saturno Butto expresses this fixation on desire by juxtaposing that which seems opposite from each other- sanctity and sexuality, darkness and light, ancient and modern, etc. It is within the tension of opposing forces that desire reveals itself. In a style which reminds the viewer of the great masters, Butto revives European sacred art of past centuries and brings it to the modern eye. “I love to mix things; sacred and profane. Fetish and sadomasochist iconographies mean something going beyond erotic-sexual definition,” says Butto.
