In Senigallia, photographer Paolo Ventura's project dedicated to the city

From June 22 through Oct. 31, Senigallia City of Photography presents an exhibition by photographer Paolo Ventura (Milan, 1968) at the Palazzo del Duca venue, a site-specific project created by the artist specifically inspired by the city in the Marche region, from which it takes its title(Senigallia, precisely), and exhibited here for the first time. About thirty works to discover the poetics of Ventura, a photographer and artist who for over twenty years has been analyzing and studying urban landscapes on which he builds his images.

Works on cities and their landscapes are one of the strands Paolo Ventura’s research and poetics addresses, landscapes that are not recognizable except sometimes for sparse details, architectures and buildings that are isolated from their context and that serve as a background for his imaginative reconstructions, recreating what could be ideal Italian views, devoid of characterization and yet always familiar and that could be found in any city. It is not the reality that already exists that interests the artist, but the infinite possibilities of being able to create and narrate what does not exist.

Ventura’s research has also in the past focused on individual cities, as in the series dedicated to Milan that began in 2021 and is still ongoing, and it is in this vein that this new work set in Senigallia fits. The artist’s gaze has focused on less touristy but no less fascinating scenarios of the city: to assume interest for him is not the canonical beauty of places that unifies city views, but rather its contradictions such as the overlapping of styles and eras that often produce an architectural hiatus. Thus we find buildings from the 1960s mingling with others from the 1970s, waterfront hotels juxtaposed with fishermen’s houses, tollhouses, and chicken coops. The eye lingers on the stratifications of the landscape without any desire to denounce, but rather with the desire to know the context better in order to be able to use and modify it and thus give life to new places that acquire an additional value and vision, almost metaphysical and out of time.

Paolo Ventura’s modus operandi starts from photography on which he then intervenes with acrylic painting, working by subtraction: from the real datum recorded by the photographic shot he creates a scenography that is indeed artificial but at the same time fascinating and timeless.

In Senigallia, photographer Paolo Ventura's project dedicated to the city

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