August Ventimiglia
A fascination with lines appears throughout August Ventimiglia’s work. A simple, handmade mark can represent many things: lines on a map, for example, are outlines of a place—an island, a river, or a landscape. Line can be the record of an action defined by the limits of the artist’s body and the materials used. For Ventimiglia, the line is also a way of marking time and space, a record of gravity and chance movements, and of relinquishing a certain degree of control. Ventimiglia’s drawings are a collaboration between himself, his materials, and time, and each one captures a moment that can never be repeated.
The reddish-brown line drawings in Ventimiglia’s Islands series are made by dropping pieces of string covered in chalk on paper. The loop of string in each drawing equals the circumference of Ventimiglia’s embrace with arms extended out from his chest. He rubs standard construction grade chalk into the string and drops the loop of string from the height of his reach onto a piece of paper. After lifting the string from the paper, the image that remains is an island, created in a moment, and defined by the hard line of the string loop. The inside …
A fascination with lines appears throughout August Ventimiglia’s work. A simple, handmade mark can represent many things: lines on a map, for example, are outlines of a place—an island, a river, or a landscape. Line can be the record of an action defined by the limits of the artist’s body and the materials used. For Ventimiglia, the line is also a way of marking time and space, a record of gravity and chance movements, and of relinquishing a certain degree of control. Ventimiglia’s drawings are a collaboration between himself, his materials, and time, and each one captures a moment that can never be repeated.
The reddish-brown line drawings in Ventimiglia’s Islands series are made by dropping pieces of string covered in chalk on paper. The loop of string in each drawing equals the circumference of Ventimiglia’s embrace with arms extended out from his chest. He rubs standard construction grade chalk into the string and drops the loop of string from the height of his reach onto a piece of paper. After lifting the string from the paper, the image that remains is an island, created in a moment, and defined by the hard line of the string loop. The inside and outside of the loop drawing is mottled with the dusty cast-off from the force of gravity. Ventimiglia is interested in the contrast between this instantaneous act of creation and the slow progression of geologic time in the formation of actual islands.
Ventimiglia’s work has been the subject of solo shows at Montserrat College of Art, Beverly, MA, Matteawan Gallery, Beacon, NY, June Fitzpatrick Gallery, Portland, ME, and Judi Rotenberg Gallery, Boston, MA. His work has been featured in group exhibitions at Schema Projects, Brooklyn, NY, New Art Center, Newton, MA, 808 Gallery, Boston University, Boston, MA, Islington Mill, Manchester, UK, the 2011 Portland Museum of Art Biennial in Maine, and the 2010 DeCordova Biennial, DeCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, Lincoln, MA. Ventimiglia has been commissioned to create large-scale wall drawings in both public and private spaces, including a corporate lobby in downtown Boston completed in October 2015.
Courtesy of Matteawan Gallery
