August Ventimiglia’s works on paper, in three dimensions, and directly on walls are based in the historical precedents of Minimalism (thoroughly digested and re-thought) and process art (rationalized and systemized). His tools come from the building trades—sandpaper, chalk, straight edge, plumb line—and with these humble items, he makes works in which the arbitrary is subsumed by reason, where the mark results from action. What we see is an image of process. His achieved goal is making marks and building images that eschew the gesture of the hand while absolutely requiring its complicit involvement. He has pared his enterprise down to single, repeated actions and calls his approach “reductive,” thereby avoiding the quagmire of narrative and imagery. …see the entire article in the print version of June’s Sculpture magazine.
