And the name on everyone’s lips for Filipino art is Ronald Ventura. I know his art, but it suddenly occurs to me I have not even seen a photograph of him. Roberta Dans, the owner of the gallery who represents him in Singapore, keeps me company as we wait for the poster-boy of the Filipino contemporary art scene to arrive.
At 38, Ronald Ventura is already on top of his craft. Part of the excitement of meeting him is to find out how he plans to up his game. He hasn’t given any hint of what his new series is, or any time frame of when collectors can expect any new work. So for now, if you can get your hands on any work of his, grab it!
He is considered one of the most successful contemporary artists to have emerged from the Philippines. At the Sotheby’s auction in Hong Kong in October 2008, a painting showing a head of a man in a gas mask littered with colourful Disney figures titled “Nesting Ground”, sold for HK$2.18 million or S$390,000. The sound of the descending hammer that sealed the bid echoed across the Southeast Asian art world as loud as the gasp of those in the auction room – Ronald Ventura had just set a world record for any Filipino contemporary art at auctions. A Singaporean whispered to his shocked companion, “Two years ago, I could get any piece by Ronald Ventura for 10 or 15 thousand.”
Collectors should know that wisdom is never punctual and hindsight is a rear view mirror for “what ifs” and “should haves”. From being a hip and affordable artist where collectors could commission works for about 15 thousand dollars to essentially an “untouchable”, Ronald Ventura’s career has been nothing short of meteoric. Today, anyone with a piece of his work holds it like a new found treasure, equivalent to standing on a piece of property in a good location; the feeling is one of exhilaration from ascending worth. Following “Nesting Ground”, last year “Natural Lies”, his satirical painting of a boy with a long nose, hit a new high, also at Sotheby’s for HK$2.54 million.
When Ventura finally arrives, it is as if I have known the man all my life. Even behind dark brown shades, I expect him to be soft spoken and not quite willing to explain his works beyond the obvious. I senses an old soul in the body of a young man. He dismisses the whole “overnight success” connotation – if anyone thinks of him as an overnight wonder, well, it’s been a long night, quoting a certain diva from Hollywood. His fingernails wear remnants of dark coats of nail paint. A stainless steel ring holding a Damien Hirst-esque human skull hangs heavily on his middle finger. “I made this ring,” he says matter-of-factly.
Art visited him early. “I knew the alphabets from A to J only, but I could draw a door or a Japanese robot,” says Ventura. He knew his calling and graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts. He also taught art for almost ten years before throwing himself lock, stock and paints into being a professional artist.
Although he has a distinct and instantly recognisable style, style is just a medium. “It’s what I have to say that matters.” And boy does he have a lot to say for an introvert. Dark doesn’t even begin to explain Ronald Ventura’s world where canvas after apocalyptic canvas depict a world where humanity has been sucked out and man has been automated to digital precision and dumbness.
His son has been his compass and model for many of his paintings since he was five. He observes how his son reacts to the environment around him. From his paintings, it is not difficult to sense his apprehension, even fear, for the kind of world his son will be growing up into. Different layers of alienation as theme run through all phases of his career, and Ventura approaches every empty canvas with this heavy responsibility and heavier images.
His first solo exhibition, “All Souls Day” in 2001 wrestled with the issue of gender and conditions of men and women have to deal with. But his landmark show was “Human Study” in 2005 at the Art Centre in Metro Manila, where images conjured a kind of “contemporary hell”. Then, while the images disturbed, his virtuosity as both a painter and sculptor caught the attention of the discerning art world leading to his ground-breaking show, “Mapping The Corporeal” at the National University of Singapore in 2008. In the words of curator Shabbir Hussain Mustafa, he laid the “groundwork for an investigation of the com-modification of the human body, paranoia and religious consciousness in modern societies.”
Ventura’s torment of the human condition attracted the attention of Tyler Rollins Fine Art in New York in 2009, a gallery in the Chelsea area that specialises in the contemporary art of Southeast Asia. The gallery objective is to put the spotlight on some of the most exciting trends in contemporary art, and Ventura’s “realities” fit the gallery’s search then to a T. Titled “Metaphysics of Skin”, it was Ventura’s border-less world of the complex mutating environment that humans had to live in. “My inspiration comes from all places,” says Ventura. “In the Philippines and everywhere in the world. Art is universal; you can develop something not based on your motherland. My art has no nationality.”
Quite apart from the atomic visuals on show, Ventura introduced his now famous “Zoomanities”, a battalion of mutant-men sculptures waging war on the very notion of sculptures itself. In fiberglass, resin, plastic, metal, silver, bronze, mostly hand painted, were gas-masked figures, human with animal heads, tattooed creatures with no name – all culminating into a cast of mutant rejects of an unrecognisable world.
From the hyper-realistic, to something borrowed from art history or memories from animated Disney fairy tales, the artist’s ability to juxtapose these images results in works crowded with fantasies without boundaries. Despite of, or indeed because of these nightmare realities, every exhibition of his is keenly awaited. Exhibitors, galleries and collectors hold a collective breathe when he unleashes a new series.
What’s next? All Ventura lets on is a project with Sotheby’s. His current works are still silently exploding in his head as he continues to find new means and mediums to express his dismay. I sense a quiet and resolved disappointment of a lack of moral code today. His colourful Disney figures continue to visit as immortals and observers, not relevant to his totally stunned-to-silence human figures and faces, these figures seem to ruminate over history’s failings and its discontent.
If there is light at the end of his desperately dismal tunnel, that would be his ceaseless energy to inquire through various forms his almost inexpressible world. And we, as audience will be cautioned and made aware through his wondrous creations, the perils of complacency and contentment.
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