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Lot Essay
Ronald Ventura has distinguished himself as an iconic name within contemporary Asian art over the past six years. Since his international debut in 2008, Ventura has emerged strongly as an artist of significant talent; rapidly expanding his visual outreach to create highly distinctive and enchanting canvases. Hailing from the Philippines, a vibrant country rich in myth, storytelling, religion, Ventura draws on all these local elements and interfaces them with a unique aesthetic texture drawn from universal visual culture. The artist is unsurpassed in exploring the "what-if" moments of human existence: the elusive and suspenseful magical quality which emanates during unexpected intersections of reality. Some of his most iconic works, such as Zookeeper (2008) and Crossed Trip (2012) reflect the juxtaposition of everyday humanity against the fantastic and unexpected. Every canvas given life under his brush is a carefully crafted tableau - an elegant dance of the figments within our imagination.
In 2010, Ronald Ventura was fascinated with the concept of television channels, and how television delivered an unlooked-for world into the comfort of our living rooms and humdrum daily routines. Through the introduction of television into middle class life within the late 1960s and 1970s - first in black and white and later colour - people were introduced to the daily stimulation of visual culture in moving picture format. Television hosts and news anchors rapidly reached the celebrity status typically afforded only to statesmen and movie stars; singers and musicians who had previously used radio to reach their audience developed a new level of showmanship and sold thousands of records after each TV appearance. A new generation of household idols was born from the TV age. The television delivered messages of joy, laughter and tragedy to viewers: the dramatic intensity of soap opera, comic variety shows, pulse-racing sport, to the harsh reality of news broadcasts. The most gripping and momentous world events could be experienced live, such as the launching of Apollo 8, Neil Armstrong walking on the moon, the 1964 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, Japan which was the first Olympic broadcast to cross the Pacific Ocean. These media phenomena penetrated social classes across all strata, and even the poorest families in Asia who eked out a meager living and shared a communal television set enjoyed this sense of connection to their global peers. Through television, people were introduced to a new way of living and dared to fantasize and dream about upgrading their social existence. Ventura produced a series of works which related to this narrative, for example Apocalyptic Channel (2010); Rainbow Punch (2011); and even dedicated an entire exhibition 'Fragmented Channels', to this theme - particularly significant because it was his European debut. Critically acclaimed as the finest painting within the'Fragmented Channels' show, Altar (Lot 9) portrays the reception room within a Philippine household, likely from a working class background. The rickety table, domestic utensils, wall-mounted crucifix, and cheaply taken studio wedding photograph are all highly recognisable objects from the less affluent Philippine society. Ventura pays precise attention to each visual object down to the coil of incense used to fend off mosquitos, a ubiquitous trope often seen in social-realist painting, and used here by Ventura as an idiomatic motif to capture the essence of the working class condition. It is a heartwarming image, indicating a life of Spartan comfort but kept neat and presentable by the owners. Yet the scene is interrupted by the odd placement of a TV set showing bright SMPTE colour bars - a visual which all children of the 70s and 80s are familiar with, when favourite programs were interrupted by poor signals, network testing, or the end of regular broadcasting during the wee hours of the morning. Instead of the crucifix, a focal point for every domestic abode in the Catholic Philippines, the TV set holds the central pride of place, resting on the table which has become its 'altar'. Thus enshrined, it supersedes other household gods, even displacing the nostalgic wedding photograph which contains the core of familial identity. This unlikely juxtaposition portrays the television as an electronic interloper into our habitual routines, intruding upon and altering the comfortable setting of our daily surroundings - represented through Ventura's brush in understated sepia hues - against the bright, loud modernity represented by the television set. Metaphorical significance aside, Ventura's painterly skill is unparalleled. The entire composition resembles Old Master tableaux, possessing a strong aesthetic of silence while evoking a recent dislocation of humanity. Flemish table still-lifes, while replete with grapes, cheese, wine, meats, also often display a half-bitten peach or a hastily set down knife to indicate a recent human presence. Similarly a viewer's awareness of the recent inhabitants of Ventura's living room is so pervasive as to be practically tangible in their absence. The wedding photograph on the wall infers a young couple starting from humble origins, setting forth together to build a life of hope and dreams. However it appears as though their religious and marital devotion have been usurped by the technicolour TV set. Yet at the same time, the wedding photograph also acts as a mirror reflection of the viewer external to the pictorial frame - a Velasquez-type device - which captures, reflects and inverts the human presence of us, the viewer, who beholds the artwork; and that of Ventura as artist who has recently departed the canvas as well. The disruptive presence of the TV set jars the optical plane, leading us to question which is the true reality - the brightly lit, colourful monitor, or the muted sepia backdrop. We wonder how the scene would change should the scheduled program flicker back on screen to interact with, and reshuffle, the carefully enacted layers of reality constructed by Ventura. The entire scene teeters on the brink of deconstructing and imploding.
This tension can only dissipate when the TV switches back to its regular programming instead of staying frozen in a moment of static. Ventura has admirably captured this taut, heavy sense of uneasy waiting. Apart from being a master painter, Ventura is also an extraordinarily talented multimedia artist who enjoys incorporating sculpture into his creations. 3 O'Clock Habit portrays a witty reversal of roles and circumstances. The family which enjoys the 'goggle box' together as a domestic unit is now physically transported into the television screen. The notion of the watcher becoming the watched is a dominant theme throughout Ventura'sartworks, whether in painting or mixed media. Adding another level of interpretation to the work, its title 3 O'Clock Habit refers to the scheduling of lives around one's favourite television program and the insidious way our existence is gradually becoming governed by the media: our hunger for constant entertainment and inability to function without a dose of visual adrenaline. As a paired work according to the artist's intent, Altar and 3 O'Clock Habit complement and contrast each other to interrogate the idea of urban domesticity interrupted by modernity, and the intrusion of a chaotic and titillating outside world into a safe, conservative family harbor. The idea of the self-contained sphere being exposed to external factors makes reference to the rapidly urbanizing and globalising landscape which Ventura experienced during this artwork's creation in 2010, and also discusses the idea of secular Philippine life being pushed too hard, too fast into international exposure. Ventura meditates upon how global society - glamorous, tawdry, invasive, simultaneously affirming and corrupting - is just a TV screen away, filtered through a glass pane, and practically held in the palm of one's hand.
In 2010, Ronald Ventura was fascinated with the concept of television channels, and how television delivered an unlooked-for world into the comfort of our living rooms and humdrum daily routines. Through the introduction of television into middle class life within the late 1960s and 1970s - first in black and white and later colour - people were introduced to the daily stimulation of visual culture in moving picture format. Television hosts and news anchors rapidly reached the celebrity status typically afforded only to statesmen and movie stars; singers and musicians who had previously used radio to reach their audience developed a new level of showmanship and sold thousands of records after each TV appearance. A new generation of household idols was born from the TV age. The television delivered messages of joy, laughter and tragedy to viewers: the dramatic intensity of soap opera, comic variety shows, pulse-racing sport, to the harsh reality of news broadcasts. The most gripping and momentous world events could be experienced live, such as the launching of Apollo 8, Neil Armstrong walking on the moon, the 1964 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, Japan which was the first Olympic broadcast to cross the Pacific Ocean. These media phenomena penetrated social classes across all strata, and even the poorest families in Asia who eked out a meager living and shared a communal television set enjoyed this sense of connection to their global peers. Through television, people were introduced to a new way of living and dared to fantasize and dream about upgrading their social existence. Ventura produced a series of works which related to this narrative, for example Apocalyptic Channel (2010); Rainbow Punch (2011); and even dedicated an entire exhibition 'Fragmented Channels', to this theme - particularly significant because it was his European debut. Critically acclaimed as the finest painting within the'Fragmented Channels' show, Altar (Lot 9) portrays the reception room within a Philippine household, likely from a working class background. The rickety table, domestic utensils, wall-mounted crucifix, and cheaply taken studio wedding photograph are all highly recognisable objects from the less affluent Philippine society. Ventura pays precise attention to each visual object down to the coil of incense used to fend off mosquitos, a ubiquitous trope often seen in social-realist painting, and used here by Ventura as an idiomatic motif to capture the essence of the working class condition. It is a heartwarming image, indicating a life of Spartan comfort but kept neat and presentable by the owners. Yet the scene is interrupted by the odd placement of a TV set showing bright SMPTE colour bars - a visual which all children of the 70s and 80s are familiar with, when favourite programs were interrupted by poor signals, network testing, or the end of regular broadcasting during the wee hours of the morning. Instead of the crucifix, a focal point for every domestic abode in the Catholic Philippines, the TV set holds the central pride of place, resting on the table which has become its 'altar'. Thus enshrined, it supersedes other household gods, even displacing the nostalgic wedding photograph which contains the core of familial identity. This unlikely juxtaposition portrays the television as an electronic interloper into our habitual routines, intruding upon and altering the comfortable setting of our daily surroundings - represented through Ventura's brush in understated sepia hues - against the bright, loud modernity represented by the television set. Metaphorical significance aside, Ventura's painterly skill is unparalleled. The entire composition resembles Old Master tableaux, possessing a strong aesthetic of silence while evoking a recent dislocation of humanity. Flemish table still-lifes, while replete with grapes, cheese, wine, meats, also often display a half-bitten peach or a hastily set down knife to indicate a recent human presence. Similarly a viewer's awareness of the recent inhabitants of Ventura's living room is so pervasive as to be practically tangible in their absence. The wedding photograph on the wall infers a young couple starting from humble origins, setting forth together to build a life of hope and dreams. However it appears as though their religious and marital devotion have been usurped by the technicolour TV set. Yet at the same time, the wedding photograph also acts as a mirror reflection of the viewer external to the pictorial frame - a Velasquez-type device - which captures, reflects and inverts the human presence of us, the viewer, who beholds the artwork; and that of Ventura as artist who has recently departed the canvas as well. The disruptive presence of the TV set jars the optical plane, leading us to question which is the true reality - the brightly lit, colourful monitor, or the muted sepia backdrop. We wonder how the scene would change should the scheduled program flicker back on screen to interact with, and reshuffle, the carefully enacted layers of reality constructed by Ventura. The entire scene teeters on the brink of deconstructing and imploding.
This tension can only dissipate when the TV switches back to its regular programming instead of staying frozen in a moment of static. Ventura has admirably captured this taut, heavy sense of uneasy waiting. Apart from being a master painter, Ventura is also an extraordinarily talented multimedia artist who enjoys incorporating sculpture into his creations. 3 O'Clock Habit portrays a witty reversal of roles and circumstances. The family which enjoys the 'goggle box' together as a domestic unit is now physically transported into the television screen. The notion of the watcher becoming the watched is a dominant theme throughout Ventura'sartworks, whether in painting or mixed media. Adding another level of interpretation to the work, its title 3 O'Clock Habit refers to the scheduling of lives around one's favourite television program and the insidious way our existence is gradually becoming governed by the media: our hunger for constant entertainment and inability to function without a dose of visual adrenaline. As a paired work according to the artist's intent, Altar and 3 O'Clock Habit complement and contrast each other to interrogate the idea of urban domesticity interrupted by modernity, and the intrusion of a chaotic and titillating outside world into a safe, conservative family harbor. The idea of the self-contained sphere being exposed to external factors makes reference to the rapidly urbanizing and globalising landscape which Ventura experienced during this artwork's creation in 2010, and also discusses the idea of secular Philippine life being pushed too hard, too fast into international exposure. Ventura meditates upon how global society - glamorous, tawdry, invasive, simultaneously affirming and corrupting - is just a TV screen away, filtered through a glass pane, and practically held in the palm of one's hand.