DEVIS VENTURELLI

Devis Venturelli, whose Lezioni di tiro won the third edition of Romaeuropa Webfactory for video art, is represented in Digital Life 2 by his second work: Superfici fonetiche. This gives us insight into the various facets of this emerging artist, born in Romagna but living and working in Milan where he began exploring the visual arts in 2004. A trained architect, Venturelli looks at urban and architectonic spaces in their fixity as scenery for installations which utilize freely moving, flexible, and fluttering elements, often long strips of fabric as with La casa dell’ospite and Estasi urbane. In Superfici fonetiche, and in a previous work, Continuum, the fluttering strips are made of a material architects use as thermal insulation that produces a rustling sound when it moves and has a reflective surface.

Lezioni di tiro also conveys a contrast between fixity and movement: rough and mountainous nature acts as backdrop to a silhouette of a man armed with a rifle who performs a macabre dance with neurotics motions. Here we see a sharper, more sarcastic tone which Venturelli had also shown in Anomalia italiana (2007). In Venturelli’s poetics, the traits-d’union are contrast, corresponding to a study of fixity/movement and space/time, and a strong surreal streak which, in looking at the present from time to time, can acquire more ecstatic or more ironically corrosive tendencies. He studied at Ecole d’Architecture et du Paysage in Bordeaux. In 2002 he graduated with a degree in Architecture from Università di Ferrara. In 2006, residence at ZKM in Karlsruhe. He’s been awarded numerous prizes: in 2011 Comncorso REWf for video art; in 2009 Pagine bianche d’autore, Menzione Lombardia. In 2008 the Premio Aletti Art Verona for Banca Aletti, in 2007 the Premio Arti Visive Sanfedele of Milan. In 2006 the Premio Videoarte, Festival Visionaria di Siena.

Winner of the 3^rd edition of Romaeuropa Webfactory in Video Art courtesy ofthe artist editing software Première, After Effects