At MAMbo Paolo Ventura pays homage to Bologna with his urban landscapes between photography and painting

MAMbo - Museo d’Arte Moderna di Bologna del Settore Musei Civici Bologna presents the exhibition Paolo Ventura. Bologna 10 + 1, curated by Danilo Montanari, open to the public from September 17 to November 3, 2024. In his new work Paolo Ventura (Milan, 1968) pays homage to the city of Bologna. His artistic process begins with a photograph printed on multiple panels stitched together on which Ventura uses paint to omit and highlight images, creating bare urban landscapes that evoke surprise and nostalgia.

Paolo Ventura’s family background was characterized by the art of storytelling: his father, Piero Ventura, was an internationally renowned author and illustrator of children’s books, and his grandmother shared her own experiences living in the Italian countryside during World War I and World War II. This background inspired Ventura in developing his distinctive approach to visual storytelling that combines historical events and pure imagination and invites the viewer into a dreamlike realm that is both familiar and dreamlike.

The artist’s interest in architectural forms stripped of their lived experience, evidenced in the backgrounds of his 2016 Short Stories, emerges in this work as well, as it did in Milan by wire and by sign and previously in 2012’s The Endless City. In these works, the cancellation of superfetations overcomes the dreamlike dimension to focus on the dimension of the solid understood as a geometric figure. The urban landscapes depicted recover only theidea of play, of assembly boxes, of a place where the viewer, in retrospect, can imagine and imagine the scripts he or she prefers. The exhibition, consisting of 11 works, is accompanied by the publication of the same name (Danilo Montanari Editore, 2024) with a note by Giovanna Pesci, limited edition of 300 copies.

Notes on the artist

Paolo Ventura is one of the most original contemporary Italian photographers who has preferred painting for some years now. He studied at the Brera Academy of Fine Arts in Milan in the early 1990s. His work has been exhibited internationally in several galleries and museum realities, such as Forma - International Center of Photography in Milan, Museum of Contemporary Art in Rome (MACRO), Fotomuseum Den Haag in The Hague, the National Gallery of Modern Art in Rome and during the Rencontres de la Photographie in Arles. He is also in the collections of Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Phillips Collection in Washington, Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris and MART - Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Trento and Rovereto. In 2012 he was selected to create a series of works for the Italian Pavilion at the 54th International Art Exhibition in Venice. His books include War Souvenir (Contrasto, 2006), Winter Stories (Aperture, 2009), L’Automa (Peliti Associati, 2011), Short Stories (Aperture, 2016), Quarantine Diary (Danilo Montanari Editore, 2020) and the monograph Paolo Ventura. Photographs and Drawings (Silvana Editoriale, 2020).

Practical information

Opening hours: Tuesdays and Wednesdays from 2 to 7 p.m.; Thursdays from 2 to 8 p.m.; Fridays, Saturdays, Sundays and holidays from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m.

Free admission

At MAMbo Paolo Ventura pays homage to Bologna with his urban landscapes between photography and painting

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