Esther Sarto, a 24-year-old painter based in Copenhagen, creates gouache and watercolor works that are often as unsettling as they are elegant. Sarto, once known as “Miss Take” as a street artist, often uses bare, entangled humans and plant-life to express her sentiments. ”I am not a very verbal person,” she told WEAART. “There are a lot of issues you can express better without words. Often the meaning lays between the lines.”
“Forest of Obscurity,” with its wooded settings and writhing subjects, offers a taste of the worlds Sarto creates. The supernatural rises out of the natural, as morphed bodies create something entirely new upon inspection. The series “End of Virtue” takes a darker turn, as huddled naked bodies create a grand pyramid and the rich dine on various body parts against a red backdrop in “Carnivores.” She often depicts her process and works-in-progress on Instagram.
Sarto’s pen on paper works can be just as starring, evidences in the striking “Human Nature,” flora constructing the image of a human. A similar image was recently translated to a massive mural by Sarto, towering over streets on a wall in Denmark. Sarto’s also done illustrative work for Medium, The New Republic, Material Girl Magazine, Aalborg Kommune, and others.
One could say that Surrealism as a movement is a way for artists to seek distraction from the mundane and engage in fantasy. On his current exhibition at
Boston based artist