Jean Jacques Venturini - Town Park

Jean-Jacques Venturini, like in the movies I paint scenes of life, figurative portraits where the restitution of reality is gently heckled by a fictional power that speaks to each of us. I like to underline the psychological depth of famous characters from show biz and cinema. If my portraits are very often treated in a Pop Art style, they all let emanate a character, a distinctive detail. In another exercise in style, when I focus on life scenes, unknown characters are captured in the privacy of an enclosed environment. The magnetism of their personality is thus captured with a certain authenticity. It is about questioning the identity of the individual and the appearance of the event, the suspension of a moment, which can suggest an action to come. I work on fiction like a sequence shot. Cinema is undeniably a source of inspiration in my work. My recent works such as The Blue Room or Courant d'air bear witness to interior scenes inspired by Edward Hopper. Like the American master, I juggle the pictorial plot, between appearance and disappearance. “These are genre scenes. I tell the beginning of a story that is already contained in the title, which everyone will interpret and end in their own way (…) The goal is to focus not on the portrait of the characters but on their occupations. » Oil painting on linen canvas is my favorite technique. Having cut my teeth in the world of creation and publishing, I now transpose my know-how from printing, screen printing or engraving onto canvas. The methods of transformation and arrangement of the image, carried out on the computer, always coordinate my work. “There is what I see with the naked eye, and what I see on the screen and in the end the interpretation that I make of it on my still virgin canvas. » The construction works at the same time the figure and the space. The effects of relief and depth are reinforced by the harmonious care given to the tones. This chromatic process interacts to forge the narrative momentum. The narration is imbued with the link with the other and its environment. Tensions, points of imbalance, striking details... The composition speaks for itself and persists in giving meaning to the scene to feed the story. This process invites us to place ourselves in the disposition of listening and looking for a better understanding. My atmospheres are generally contemplative, they invite meditation and introspection. I conceive of my painted identities as illustrations of a collective memory; self-representations, obvious characteristics of our conscious and our unconscious. These are memories that we forget and that resurface, that everyone has already experienced or witnessed. "A successful scene of life must touch the sensitivity of the spectator, by being linked to the memory of a moment of life, to a projection of oneself, to a known environment. I do not paint to decorate walls but to touch souls. »