Info via www.Montserrat.edu…

Montserrat College of Art is excited to announce August Ventimiglia:Chance Encounter, now on view in the Carol Schlosberg Alumni Gallery. The exhibition calls to mind the balance between precision and chance. Inspired by artists such as John Cage and Merce Cunningham, Ventimiglia’s practice incorporates interdisciplinary themes such as music, chance operation and discovery.

Chance Encounter looks primarily at Ventimiglia’s evocative production of line through collage and drawing. A portion of the show features work from “Event Series”, a collection of blue and black snap-chalk lines. Traditionally used to create straight, flat lines for construction/carpentry, Ventimiglia employs the snap-chalk line as poetic cadence, rather than a practical tool. His marks are precise in that each are planned and plotted, however Ventimiglia invests in the split second, the chance encounter where the line meets the paper and the chalk lays to rest where it may.

“Event Study, No. 6” (2009) illustrates the intention of hand-made practice with the spontaneous influence of chance. Ventimiglia’s process is painstakingly calculated, completely void of gesture. However, the final composition of “Event Study, No. 6” alike the other exhibited line drawings, reveal gesture. Within every detail: unpreventable chalk splatters, differentiations in line thickness dependent on how worn the chalk line is, etc. preserves a transfer of mark making and a blind faith in chance.

Also on view are a collection of ink lines cut from pages of various books. The series, entitled “Borrowed Lines” is a composite manifestation of found underlining, collage and text. Each composition originated from pages of classic anthropology and literature books. Ventimiglia carefully cuts out each underlined text, transferring and reassembling each line on another sheet of paper. While the factual text is lost forever, we remember that whatever it read, was considered important to the reader.