Jean-Jacques Venturini

Jean-Jacques Venturini, as in the cinema, paints scenes of life, figurative portraits where the restitution of reality is delicately heckled by a fictional power that speaks to each of us. He likes to underline the psychological depth of famous characters from showbiz and cinema, Marylin, Rihanna, Ray Charles, Jay Z and Beyoncé, Sean Pen, among others. If these portraits are very often treated in a Pop Art style, they all let emanate a character, a distinctive detail.

In another style exercise, when the artist focuses on life scenes, unknown characters are captured in the intimacy of a closed environment. The magnetism of their personality is thus captured with a certain authenticity. It is a question of questioning the identity of the individual and the appearance of the event, the suspension of a moment, which can suggest an action to come. The painter works the fiction like a sequence plan. Cinema is an undeniable source of inspiration in his work.
His recent works, such as La chambre bleue or Courant d'air, show interior scenes inspired by Edward Hopper. Like the American master, Jean-Jacques juggles 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 each person will interpret and finish in his own way (...) The goal is to emphasize not the portrait of the characters but their occupations."

Oil painting on linen canvas is his favorite technique. The painter made his weapons in the medium of the creation and the edition, he transposes today on canvas his know-how resulting from the impression, the serigraphy or the engraving. The methods of transformation and arrangement of the image, carried out on computer, always coordinate his 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 blank 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 narrative is impregnated 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. The atmospheres are generally contemplative, inviting us to meditation and introspection.

The artist conceives his painted identities as illustrations of a collective memory; representations of the self, of the obvious characters of our conscious and unconscious. They are memories that we forget and that resurface, that everyone has already experienced or witnessed.

"A successful life scene must touch the sensitivity of the viewer, 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."