The work is not previewed online because that encounter belongs to the patron and the people who come to their home or office, not the internet.
The absence is deliberate. The visible work is released privately, documented properly and delivered physically. Its public image is withheld.
Angelo Valentino has been making and installing work in public and private spaces since 1990, often without attribution, announcement or explanation.
The visible works released here are not those installations. They are a private patronage mechanism for funding a wider practice that may appear elsewhere under no name at all.
The private acquisition
The price rises by 1.5% after each sale.
This is not a discount structure. It is a public record of belief.
Acquiring artwork begins with a private message.
The buyer does not select from a catalogue. The patron may send a short note, memory, dream, image, phrase or private association. This becomes part of the commission process, but the final work remains entirely at the artist’s discretion.
The work is created by commitment and trust from the person who caused it to exist.
The work is sold unseen, but not without protection.
If the patron does not wish to keep the work, it may be returned within 30 days. The work will then be privately withdrawn and destroyed. The purchase price will be refunded, less the stated production, handling and administrative costs.
Payment may be made by bank transfer or other agreed settlement method. A full UK VAT invoice and authenticity documentation will be issued for each acquisition.
Alternative settlement methods may be discussed privately.
Works are sold through Papa G Limited, a company registered in England and Wales. A full UK VAT invoice, provenance record, paper certificate and on-chain authenticity record are issued for each acquisition.
Company number: 5139754
VAT number: 188 4899 27
Registered office: Building 6, No 30 Friern Park, London N12 9DA
For the patron who understands the premise, the next step is deliberately simple.
Great Art works have some magic, they affect change in living things. They are worth the suspense and trouble. They demand it.
This project took a decade of constant work to skill to start and another to perfect. They leave most people standing in awe on first seeing them. I do not think you would have read this far if you did not have "a feeling" that there is more to this. Trust yourself, your feelings are everything, when we stop hearing them whisper to us, we have nothing but a sea of selling lies and jealous voices to guide us through life. Listen to your heart.
Let's be truthful for a moment: I know almost anyone with common sense would tell you they would not support this project. These are the people and the feelings, that so often hold us back from all the great things in life, the best actions, the exciting and rewarding things. But things of value always have a risk.
As humans we are programmed to doubt ourselves... and that is a terrible place for any intelligence. As it also cruelly holds us back from change.
This whole site is based on the idea that there exist people that will trust in their own judgment. Our feelings can not lie to us, we lie to them. In the past, you probably ignored your instincts and stayed pretty sensible.
Today, and you will get something of real importance.
Something that will be of real value to you and indirectly to the world. I know that to be true.
Discover your ability to know you have found something of beauty and lasting importance.
Here is something about my art, and why support matters.
"Standing in front of the large imposing images, is an authentic experience. These days art is rarely if ever this affecting and this dare I say it, compelling."
Matthew Steeples - The Steeple Times. London
Technology has given us a thousand forms of irresistible instant gratification and unrelenting distraction from self-awareness. Sometimes a disruption makes us recall a promise we all make to ourselves and break immediately: To have only genuine people and good things around us that bring value and meaning. Not more expensive noise and pretty trash.
There is an absence of my Art on the internet, and this is very deliberate: This is unusual as I have been making Art since before internet Art started, I wholeheartedly welcomed the digital age and used technology with no issue... but I have some strong reasons to keep my Artwork exclusively in real-life only.
In the beginning, it was to stop people from copying my work and to maintain some exclusivity, but there was and is another more personal reason; A phone or computer screen is not the right place to first see any genuine work of Art.
I used to try to have a modest real-life exhibition every few years and show my big works the old-fashioned way: good locations, nice invitations, people come, some people like, enough to buy.
When the internet started to work, as a young Artist I saw the web as a wonderful canvas for new types of Art, but not much as a good gallery for Art with a capital A, so I did something, that was unique and a little rash: I wrote the following letter and sent it to everyone who had collected or wanted to display any of my works:
"I kindly ask that all collectors, galleries and museums that are in possession of my signed artworks NOT to EVER show, make or reproduce any digital copies or images of said works online, on their websites or on any social media, even in an effort to help expand awareness in me or my Art."
Sticking to those principles means that selling my Art is not at all easy. But I am trying.
The work I will send you took a decade to craft and half a lifetime to be equipped to even start. It was a long journey in human time, and distance. Like crossing an unexplored new continent solo and on foot, but in the adventure I found and brought back way more than just hunks of gold in the streams and big diamonds in the sand.
These new works are answers to life's imperfect human questions. In part, that is why the private prompt matters.
My new work can be acquired only through this site. It will belong to a few self-selecting people who understand that the first encounter with a serious work of art should not always happen online.
Artist's Statement About this Work.
"Making this latest collection of photographic works consumed nearly ten years. It was exciting to start, but to take it to "perfection" was the hardest thing I have ever finished.
To make this thing that can be called Art, beyond just a beautiful visual account of the human condition, needed a wholly different process: to completely obfuscate all the cotton, hay and rags of life and to look clear-heartedly inward and own the truth of one's time, to exclude repetitions, excise vanities, cut away sentiments, and pull a distilled insight out of meaning, so as to be relevant to others.
Each step a slow-motion battle against an army of monsters, common distractions and warm jealousy.
All this to reach a place where Art, this Art, has power beyond any sorcery of matter or new arrangement of old words.
If done right, something life-altering can happen when enough emotion, experience and human honesty are concentrated at one time and in one object. At that moment, something strikes deep inside, and the meanings of common words can be changed, things ugly written are reset, and anything can be forgiven, a life transformed."
Angelo Valentino
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