Paolo Ventura

Ventura’s Winter Stories series is a collection of surreal photographs that blur the boundaries of what a 2-D image can be. Each image is a mixture of paintings, performance, and costume captured in digital then printed on paper; just the mediums are enough to consider. However we are further bombarded with concept as these theatrical scenes boarder reality and fantasy as well. Knowing that we exist in a post-modern, and post-Freudian society, this work automatically will get slammed into a surrealist dialogue where the artists dream psychology will be informing how we interpret what we see. However, I think that there is more to it than old fashioned dream analysis. There is a sense of nostalgia and memory here but overriding that is a macabre aesthetic that seems to desire creating a fantasy. Fantasy to me is equivalent with miracle, and leaves me with a sense that the world can be more than what we make it on a day to day basis. The potential for miracles is almost realized in Ventura’s Winter Stories, and I’m left inspired.
http://www.hastedhunt.com/photos.php?a=paolo_ventura&i=57806

Winter Stories, #48, 2009, digital C-print 40x 50

Winter Stories, #31, 2009, digital C-print 40x 50