“Paul Ferman’s ‘Permanent Past’, presents a series of large-scale colour photographs on paper and videos which examine the accretions of 28 centuries of habitation in Rome, a city which the artist has visited regularly since the 1980s. Incorporating his own photographs of the “Eternal City”, its archaeological sites, street maps and manipulated scenes from Italian, American and British films set in Rome, Ferman sifts through the sediment of the metropolis to reveal its spectacular periods of great knowledge, artistic creation, science and superstition. In this way, he identifies the relationship between cultural, social and aesthetic trends in contemporary art.”
-J Turner, 2023
