After training as a classical dancer in Rome, Alberto Sorbelli settled in France in 1986 and enrolled in the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris in 1989, following a course in painting.

Aware of the need to take an ostensible position in the world of contemporary art, Alberto Sorbelli has created a series of "roles' for characters that he has personified.

In 1990, during the open days at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts – open days where students are expected to exhibit, giving an insight of their plastic art production - Alberto Sorbelli set up an office emplacement in a busy part of the exhibition to present his Le secrétariat du secrétaire de Monsieur Sorbelli. Convinced that the real importance of theses open days is to exhibit ones capacity for work, he received visitors to speak about Mr. Sorbelli, "the great Italian artist, absent at that particular moment". This first role certainly got him noticed, but it raised an objection from his teachers: what could he sell to integrate the art market? Alberto Sorbelli has an intuitive feeling about his capacity to propose exchanges or relationships of quality.

He made a simple analogy between this work and the work of a prostitute. This comparison encouraged him to take on a second role, that of a "whore". Between 1992 and 1995, he handed out his phone number at openings, dressed in drag and remained available, 24 hours a day, for people who wanted to call him. He didn't see this as a real act of provocation – even though he was aware of a form of moral transgression – but rather as a logical extension of the de-materialisation of the work of art. In 1994, he was censored a few days before the opening of the L'hiver de l'amour exhibition: the commissioners suspected that he really was an active prostitute.

The role of "whore" also produced violent reactions: he was thrown out of openings and sometimes even struck by the security service.

He used the violence he aroused as a catharsis and created a third role, "the victim of aggression". Alberto Sorbelli conscientiously organised (by setting up workshops) his own situations of aggression in major events of contemporary art. In 1999, at the Venice Biennial, he was attacked by a couple during the opening.

Each of his appearances tests his ability to produce fantasy. He doesn't consider his 'roles' as performances, but as a means of 'proposing-provoking relationships.

Alberto Sorbelli desire to maintain a high profile can be seen in his strategic occupation of various media of communication (cinema, television, press) to avoid any danger of being restricted to the world of contemporary art.

He appeared, playing his own role, in two films by Judith Cahen, La croisade d'Anne Buridan and La révolution sexuelle n'a pas eu lieu.

Then, following Matthieu Laurette's example, he began a series of appearances on television. He didn't present himself as an artist – not an attractive profile for television – but as an extravagant eccentric. He managed to attract sponsorship from various clothing brand names, becoming an advertising medium himself. He considers television as a contemporary locus for "reaching the people".

For the Nous nous sommes tant aimés exhibition in 1999, Alberto Sorbelli proposed a kind of media board game, leaving a trail of portraits of himself as victim of aggression, in the cultural newspapers. This left people the task of fitting the puzzle together from these images scattered through the press.

He also acts as a kind of mediator within his own network.

In 1995, he set up the production of Just from Cynthia, a CD-ROM made during the X/Y exhibition, the contemporary part of Femininmasculin, le sexe de l'art, at the Georges Pompidou Centre. It brought together around thirty people from different backgrounds (graphic artists, writers, designers …) to create a new form of review. The schema of creation of this review was adapted to a new medium – not traditional paper, but the CD-ROM, a digital medium.

He participated in the activation of a Parisian scene outside the world of galleries and museums. This organised exhibitions in private apartments and provided a solution for institutions looking for new forms of exhibiting. In 1997, Bob Bing, brèves rencontres at the Caisse des Dépôts et Consignations was an exhibition and a scheduled programme of intervention by young artists, organised by Alberto Sorbelli.

He has also participated in several collective exhibitions on Internet – Version originale, organised by Lyon's Museum of Contemporary Art (the MAC) in 1997, and Entrée libre, a commission by the Ministry of Culture in 1999.

Alberto Sorbelli's approach is part of an art of attitude where the status of artist is no longer defined by the body of plastic art produced, but by the artist's ability to act within an artistic milieu. The artist is performer, producer and mediator – continuing the idea of the de-materialisation of the work of art and seeking a new strategy to occupy his milieu and reinventing the commercial relationships that exist within it.

Laetitia Rouiller