L’oca gigante e altre meraviglie (The giant goose and other wonders) presents a selection of works that convey Paolo Ventura’s creative universe, characterized by settings suspended between reality and fantasy, photographs often contaminated by painterly interventions and collage. At times the artist himself enters these worlds, portraying himself or his family: thus arise short, fairy-tale and surreal narratives where the fascination for the circus and disguise emerges, along with his passion for uniforms and war stories. To create his photographic sets, the artist from Milan builds dioramas with cardboard and objects found at flea markets, bringing to life a mise en abîme that becomes a central element of his poetics. The settings are sometimes raw, sometimes dreamlike; they evoke distant memories, either lived in person or recounted. The places appear somehow familiar, belonging to a shared imagination, yet they are not actually identifiable.
The exhibition unfolds at Palazzo Santa Margherita and will also feature a special section in the Museo della Figurina, where the artist, invited to explore the museum’s historical collection, takes part in an unprecedented project that sparks a dialogue between the figurines and his personal imagery, investigating thematic nuclei particularly dear to him through photography: time, identity, the world of circus and masks, uniforms, urban views. The juxtaposition between the two expressive media highlights a shared aesthetic of the fragment, where each image can belong to a series and open different stories depending on the viewer. In a world marked by speed and digital oblivion, Paolo Ventura’s shots, together with chromolithographs, force us to slow down, demanding attention, observation, imagination, and silence. What engages the viewer is not only the aesthetic quality, but also the ability to activate individual and collective memories, to open gateways in time and to reflect on what has been and what might have been.
