Valentina Ceci: industrial landscape and poetry of the artificial
Discover the artistic research of Valentina Ceci, focused on the relationship between human intervention and dominion over the world. Her series Impianti reflects on complex and timely themes through deliberately unpleasant and unaesthetic subjects: industrial plants, refineries, and functional architectures stripped of any decorative intent.
Yet, in Ceci’s work, even the harshest and most disturbing creations of humankind are transformed into poetic images, capable of evoking subtle and delicate emotions. Her paintings contain no natural or animal elements; even the sky appears artificial, with clouds that seem to originate from the plants themselves, as if they were a direct extension of human action.
The art of Valentina Ceci
The use of colored ballpoint pen, often combined with watercolor, gives her works a fragile, dusty appearance, almost ephemeral. This visual quality becomes a metaphor for human existence: concrete and tangible, yet inevitably destined to fade away.
Her urban landscapes resonate with the research of photographer Margaret Bourke-White, sharing a common pursuit of beauty within brutality and poetry within cathedrals of concrete and steel. Industrial plants and infrastructural architectures are immersed in dreamlike atmospheres, transforming them into icons of unexpected grace.
A striking example is her lyrical reinterpretation of the Millau Viaduct, emerging from the waves like a suspended vision, symbolically connecting two different worlds.
Who is Valentina Ceci
Born in Milan in 1985, Valentina Ceci graduated with top honors from the Brera Academy of Fine Arts, where she later became an assistant lecturer in Scenography. She collaborated on stage design projects for theatrical and television productions and initially worked as a scenographer and illustrator before dedicating herself fully to painting and exhibiting.
She has taught drawing at the Scuola Superiore d’Arte Applicata at the Castello Sforzesco. In 2013, she was selected for the Illustrators Exhibition at the Bologna Children’s Book Fair, with her work shown in a traveling exhibition across four museums in Japan. In the same year, she won the Bonatto Minella Prize, chaired by Vittorio Sgarbi, and presented her first solo exhibition.
She regularly participates in solo and group exhibitions as well as painting and illustration competitions. She currently lives and works in Milan.
