Milano: proiezioni astratte

Over the last twenty years, in almost all my works, I have set my stories in an urban landscape, which I build with wood and cardboard and then photograph. With re-
spect to the early works in which the maniacal attention to detail made the representation almost perfectly realistic, over time I have preferred to simplify each gesture. I put my light cardboard buildings on a table, with the windows drawn in, and that is enough for me.
In both cases, it is the representation of an indefinite city, my ideal city in its colors and forms, though deep down I know that it has always been Milan that inspires me.
What appears in this book is a “true” city, a “true” Milan. It is true in the position of the buildings and their shapes. I start with a photo taken with a telephone, I print it and then with a small brush and a few colors I start to eliminate anything that hampers my thinking. It is interesting to see how a different place rapidly appears, almost a theater set perched between the raising of the curtain and the start of the performance. I feel like I’m walking in a city late at night, but with a light that brightens it, an eclipse in reverse.
For me, Milan is a city drawn in the sky by hundreds of cables and wires that cross each other, run parallel, following and turning. Besides creating an abstract projection of the city, these cables hold the buildings together, like motionless marionettes. A big pair of scissors could cut one of those cables, and everything
would collapse.
Milan occupies all the upper zones, and on the horizon every space is filled up. There are no gaps where you can imagine something else. - From the introductory text by Paolo Ventura