Emmanuelle, 2025

Jean-Jacques Venturini  

Jean-Jacques Venturini, like in the cinema

He 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 emphasize the psychological depth of famous characters in show biz 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 leave a character, a distinctive detail. In another style exercise, when the artist focuses on scenes from life, unknown characters are captured in the privacy of an enclosed 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, being able to suggest an action to come. The painter works with fiction like a sequence shot. Cinema is undeniably a source of inspiration in his work.

His recent works such as After, The Blue Room or Courant d'Air, testify to interior scenes inspired by Edward Hopper. Like the American master, Jean-Jacques juggles the pictorial intrigue, between appearance and disappearance.

“These are genre scenes. I tell the beginning of a story which is already contained in the title, which everyone will interpret and end in their own way (…) The goal is to focus not on the portrait of the characters but on their occupations. "

Oil painting on linen canvas is his favorite technique. The painter cut his teeth in the world of creation and publishing, today he transposes on canvas his know-how from printing, screen printing or engraving. The methods of transformation and arrangement of the image, carried out on a 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 I make on my still blank canvas. "

The construction works on the figure and the space at the same time. 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 narration is imbued with the bond with the other and his 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 listening and looking disposition for a better understanding.

The atmospheres are generally contemplative, they invite contemplation and introspection. The artist sees his painted identities as illustrations of a collective memory; representations of oneself, of the obvious characters of our conscious and our unconscious. These are memories that we forget and that reappear, that everyone has already experienced or witnessed.

“A successful life scene must touch the spectator's sensitivity, being linked to the memory of a moment in life, to a projection of oneself, to a known environment. I don't paint to decorate walls but to touch souls. "

Canoline Critiks.