Ronald Ventura

The work is in good condition overall. The canvas is clear and sound. There are indications of light wear and handling, along with an abrasion located particularly on the bottom margin (right corner). Under ultraviolet light inspection, there is no evidence of retouching. Unframed, on stretcher.
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Ronald Ventura’s recent collection of work signifies the artist’s growing interest in islands, viewing their dense mass as a symbolic, and subsequently metaphorical, discourse on the physical form. However, it is not the human body that interests him. The artist’s penchant for collecting, and overlapping signs and symbols, represents a return to a singular, and unified narrative. The concept of an island, within his creative paradigm, is to emphasize the emptiness of isolation. In Eye Land, the appropriated images have been wrestled out of their original contexts. A bedlam of colors and shapes, the images appear to be weightless, suspended of meaning. This is visually translated by the images being grouped together, as they seemingly float in a blank space.

Material excess brought on by capitalism, has given birth to the terrible twins: confusion and vacuity. A byproduct of this coupling is alienation, which has further intensified the modern trappings of technology. Within the present work, the chaotic body of images personifies an island, communicating the feeling of being overwhelmed from systemic isolation. The symbolic imagery of the island in the works may also refer to the artist’s homeland.

The Philippines is one of the four largest insular nations in the world. Limited in resources and surrounded by bodies of water, an island is susceptible to the forces of nature. Ventura’s islands act as maps, tracing and outlining the oppressive histories and living conditions that effect modern society. He offers no direction in the present work, save for a lingering calm brought on by the aesthetic grouping of the images, weightlessness and suspended in midair.

However, as demonstrated in Eye Land, this notion of weightlessness is a ruse. It is not so much an absence of mass, or even gravity, but rather it is the realization that there is another force vying for dominance. The natural order of existence is to maintain the status quo. The curious inertia that holds everything together is resistant to change. However the present work defies logic. Eye Land appears to float in suspension, moving towards an end goal, a point of pure and absolute saturation.