Using the method of collage as a starting point, the interdisciplinary practice of Mauro Ventura evolves across painting, sculpture, installation and performance. Their investigation asserts itself on the research of ancient languages that study the occult, proposing a hyperreality or a parallel video-game like melting pot of syncretism. These virtual realities indulge in ritualesque-like actions and ways of painting that question formats with the aim to transform social structures. Demons are a recurring motif in Ventura´s practice, used as a means to explore the duality of things, invoking two opposite spheres of life and exploring the polarities of light and dark, visible and invisible, good and evil, presence and absence. Mauro Ventura (b. 1993, Vila Nova de Famalicão) studied in Faculdade de Belas Artes da Universidade do Porto (2011) and HFBK, Dresden (2014). Recent exhibitions include THE FAIREST THE FAIREST the right to transform, HOTO, Berlin, 2022; AMYGDALA DEMONIA, Anuario 19, Camara Municipal Porto, 2020; AMYGDALA DEMONIA, Centro Comercial Stop - Kunsthalle Freeport Porto 2019; Gardens Of Drexciya m.i.1.glisse Berlin, 2019; FAXION IZ WAK, CRAK IZ BACK- Berru, Sistencia,; Installation Polyphony Studios, Berlin, 2018.
Mauro creates a narrative in which shape-shifting figures that linger as remnants of the past, serve as portals to bring the past, the present and the future into life. While in past eras, the presence of magical figures and creatures were ascribed an evil character and became targets throughout history, here Ventura offers a way of looking at witchcraft, alchemy and spirituality by reframing these characters in a contemporary way that embraces transhumanist values. Here we are focusing on spirituality as a symbolic pathway for imagining different worlds and possibilities into reality and engaging with visible and invisible entities in order to demonstrate how we demonize things. For their solo exhibition "Forest of Metal Whispers", at Gallery Duarte Sequeira, the artist approaches spirituality as a symbolic pathway for imagining different worlds and possibilities into reality, while engaging with visible and invisible entities, in order to demonstrate how we tend to demonize things.
Credits
resources: rusted steel and wax format: open house photography: Filipe Braga
