Guillaume Valenti

Guillaume Valenti is a classically trained painter, who uses his skills of trompe l’oeil to depict scenes which are simultaneously grounded in reality and fiction. Fascinated by methods of display, architecture and the character of different buildings, Valenti constantly accumulates images of gallery spaces, artist studios, historic buildings and museums. Selecting base images from this personal catalogue, he will replicate the bare bones of a space, painting timber, flooring, panels, and walls first. Once this blueprint of the initial image has been cast, he begins to add objects not found in the original photo, populating the canvas with ladders, TVs, podiums, and plinths. Welding his brush as a set designer would dress a stage, Valenti plays with traits of Renaissance composition and perspective, replacing grandiose details with practical objects. Disorientating traditional subjects rendered within classical painting, mundane items are bathed in light, depicted in painstaking detail. Raising questions around the pedestalling of certain objects and methods of display, Valenti’s tongue-in-cheek relationship to artifice disrupts hierarchical dynamics within art history and architecture.