Paolo Ventura: Quarantine Diary

Weinstein Hammons Gallery is pleased to present Quarantine Diary, an exhibition of 18 new paintings by internationally renowned artist, Paolo Ventura. The exhibition will be on view by appointment starting July 10th.

Originally based in Milan, Paolo Ventura found himself in Anghiari, Tuscany during the heat of the coronavirus pandemic to escape “the red zone”. Under serious lockdown restrictions and  without his photographic equipment, Ventura started painting as a means of daily meditation. 

In contrast to Ventura’s previous work which draws inspiration from history, fiction and the imagined, Quarantine Diary is based on the details of everyday life and the present. The paintings in the exhibition include a portrait of his neighbor smoking a cigarette at her window, an effervescent vitamin c tablet dissolving in water, and a broken butterfly wing –– all reminders of the impermanence of this specific time. 

This exhibition, though an in-depth exploration of the artist's personal experience, speaks to the global experience of the quarantine and creates a collective permanent diary. Painted on brown wrapping paper with the artist’s limited supplies of acrylic paint, Ventura shows us the adaptability of art making. A book accompanying the exhibition Quarantine Diary is being published by Danilo Montanari Editore (Ravenna, 2020).

Paolo Ventura studied at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera in Milan in the early 1990s. His work has been exhibited internationally, including at the Forma International Center for Photography, Milan; Museum of Contemporary Art of Roma (MACRO), Rome; The Hague Museum of Photography, The Hague; Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna, Rome and during the Rencontres de la Photographie, Arles. In 2012, he was selected to create a series of works for the Italian national pavilion at the 54th Venice Biennale; he also received a commission from the Museum of Contemporary Art of Rome. And recently Ventura was invited for a commission by the MART, the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Trento and Rovereto, Italy. Four monographs of Paolo Ventura's work have been published: War Souvenir (Contrasto, 2006), Winter Stories (Aperture and Contrasto, 2009), The Automaton (Peliti Asociati, 2011) and Lo Zuavo Scomparso (Punctum Press, 2012). A retrospective show of Ventura’s work Carousel is scheduled to open at CAMERA Centro Italiano per la Fotografia in September 2020. 

To view the gallery’s #checkingin video of Paolo Ventura on Quarantine Diary, please click here.