Montreal – The Italian Cultural Institute in Montreal hosts the exhibition “Entre les Cartes” by Alberto Porro until February 20, showcasing works from his Card Paintings series created between 2022 and 2025. Porro’s paintings explore the symbolic and expressive potential of playing cards, juxtaposed with everyday textures such as milk cartons, wallpaper, and urban facades, revealing subtle connections between the ordinary and the symbolic.
Inspired by Italian visual traditions, the series reinterprets historical regional card decks through lenses of metaphysics and magical realism. It begins as a reflection on Italian identity and diaspora and expands into broader meditations on shared imagery and cross-cultural narratives. Porro also incorporates European decks, like the Cuckoo cards, once widespread across the continent, emphasizing playing cards as cultural exchange tools.
In his most recent works, Porro approaches a more esoteric and psychoanalytic dimension: the cards become instruments for dreams, memories, and unconscious visions. Echoing Alejandro Jodorowsky’s philosophy of tarot as a mirror of the self, Porro transforms painting into a space for introspection and imaginative exploration.