.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
Filipino artist Ronald Ventura harnesses the power of fables through his visual confections riddled with Pop Bacchanalia. His artistic visions weigh heavily with myth and magic, undoubtedly an influence of the rich culture of story-telling, which can be traced to the pre-Spanish and Spanish periods of Philippine history. Ventura has rapidly expanded his idiosyncratic visual outreach to create highly recognisable and lucidly spellbinding compositions. Each canvas exudes an elusive and dramatic fantastical quality during surprising moments of reality, through a carefully selected motley of unique characters, metaphors and motifs to entice and spark our imaginations.
Although Ventura has consistently incorporated or referenced elements of pop culture and animation in his work, none has been so explicit and thoroughly investigated in Humanime 1 and its associated series of paintings. Across this series, Ventura combines the two concepts of "human" and "animal," or "anime" - the Japanese graphic style - to present the amalgamation of human reality and an explosion of fantasy and imagination. The present work is rendered in his quintessential hyperrealistic painting style overlaid with elements of both a pop art sensibility and his well-known influence of graffiti. In Humanime 1 , Ventura’s female muse and only human character in the painting takes up the entire surface of the canvas and is rendered entirely in a monochromatic palette of black and white; in fact, most of this work is devoid of colour, resulting in the sparse pops of colour to become the main focus of the viewer. The female figure’s face is frozen in time – a look of shock or horror as she raises a hand to almost cover her mouth.
Superimposed on top of almost the entire painting in bold delineated black graphic lines, is what looks like an illustration by John Tenniel from Lewis Carroll’s ‘Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There’, a sequel to his more popular novel, ‘Alice in Wonderland’ . This particular illustration is of the Lion and the Unicorn, a pair of fictional characters that are based on a nursey rhyme of the same name, as well as an allegory for bitter foes. However, it seems that Ventura has taken some artistic license with the original illustration, removing Alice’s head completely and replacing the head of the unicorn with that of a woman’s. Furthermore, the classical style of wood block illustrations, fuse with a pair of line-drawn demons and it is not entirely clear where one ends and begins. To the lower right corner are a ring of seven dwarves depicted in colour, and at a quick glace they are instantly recognizable as the dwarves from the Disney version of Snow White. Yet, a closer look reveals something far more sinister and it becomes clearer that something has been done to them: some of them have taken on animal-like features such as the snout of a wolf or a nose of a bear.
These popular characters in books and movies conjure up feelings of déjà vu, but leave the viewer with an unsatisfying trip down memory lane by subverting the familiar imagery, revealing a darker history or meaning behind these figures of our childhood. For example, apart from producing well-loved animations such as ‘Snow White’, Disney also produced propaganda and training films for the military during World War II, while John Tenniel was a political cartoonist for Punch magazine for over fifty years – indeed, it is speculated that the Lion and the Unicorn caricatures William Ewart Gladstone as the Unicorn, and Benjamin Disraeli as the Lion, alluding to the pair's frequent parliamentary battles.
Considering these ideas, it seems as if Humanime 1 is a visual Bildungsroman , relating to the coming of age of a sensitive person – here, Ventura’s female protagonist – who goes in search of answers to life's questions with the goal of achieving maturity. The naïve expression of shock or horror mentioned earlier, could also transform to one of enlightenment, which is further symbolised by a kaleidoscopic rainbow which shoots out of her right eye like a laser beam, bringing colour to her dull and lifeless world. Incidentally, Ventura’s female character bears a resemblance to another famous coming-of-age character in popular culture: Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz played by Judy Garland, which is famously known for being one of the world’s first live action coloured motion pictures, in which Dorothy goes from monochromatic Kansas to the colourful world of Oz. This concept of ‘coming-of-age’ brings to mind Crossed Trip (Humanime Series) painted by Ventura the year before, which juxtaposes the visual language of Japanese Harajuku pop culture with skulls and other demonic characters to represent the protagonist’s coming-of-age. Unlike Crossed Trip (Humanime Series) , which focuses on the individual internal emotions of one experiencing such a moment, Humanime 1 expounds on the idea of the realization that the world is not a perfect place of fairytales and unicorns, and though at times painful and horrific, is necessary in order to truly understand and appreciate our human existence.
There is no doubt that Ventura is able to bring together a myriad of compelling images through his technical virtuosity, and the artist’s brilliant mastery at assembling them into a visual feast. However, what is truly remarkable about Humanime 1 is the artist’s innate ability to suspend a fleeting moment of self-realisation and convey the intricacies of our existence and the complexity of the human condition.
Although Ventura has consistently incorporated or referenced elements of pop culture and animation in his work, none has been so explicit and thoroughly investigated in Humanime 1 and its associated series of paintings. Across this series, Ventura combines the two concepts of "human" and "animal," or "anime" - the Japanese graphic style - to present the amalgamation of human reality and an explosion of fantasy and imagination. The present work is rendered in his quintessential hyperrealistic painting style overlaid with elements of both a pop art sensibility and his well-known influence of graffiti. In Humanime 1 , Ventura’s female muse and only human character in the painting takes up the entire surface of the canvas and is rendered entirely in a monochromatic palette of black and white; in fact, most of this work is devoid of colour, resulting in the sparse pops of colour to become the main focus of the viewer. The female figure’s face is frozen in time – a look of shock or horror as she raises a hand to almost cover her mouth.
Superimposed on top of almost the entire painting in bold delineated black graphic lines, is what looks like an illustration by John Tenniel from Lewis Carroll’s ‘Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There’, a sequel to his more popular novel, ‘Alice in Wonderland’ . This particular illustration is of the Lion and the Unicorn, a pair of fictional characters that are based on a nursey rhyme of the same name, as well as an allegory for bitter foes. However, it seems that Ventura has taken some artistic license with the original illustration, removing Alice’s head completely and replacing the head of the unicorn with that of a woman’s. Furthermore, the classical style of wood block illustrations, fuse with a pair of line-drawn demons and it is not entirely clear where one ends and begins. To the lower right corner are a ring of seven dwarves depicted in colour, and at a quick glace they are instantly recognizable as the dwarves from the Disney version of Snow White. Yet, a closer look reveals something far more sinister and it becomes clearer that something has been done to them: some of them have taken on animal-like features such as the snout of a wolf or a nose of a bear.
These popular characters in books and movies conjure up feelings of déjà vu, but leave the viewer with an unsatisfying trip down memory lane by subverting the familiar imagery, revealing a darker history or meaning behind these figures of our childhood. For example, apart from producing well-loved animations such as ‘Snow White’, Disney also produced propaganda and training films for the military during World War II, while John Tenniel was a political cartoonist for Punch magazine for over fifty years – indeed, it is speculated that the Lion and the Unicorn caricatures William Ewart Gladstone as the Unicorn, and Benjamin Disraeli as the Lion, alluding to the pair's frequent parliamentary battles.
Considering these ideas, it seems as if Humanime 1 is a visual Bildungsroman , relating to the coming of age of a sensitive person – here, Ventura’s female protagonist – who goes in search of answers to life's questions with the goal of achieving maturity. The naïve expression of shock or horror mentioned earlier, could also transform to one of enlightenment, which is further symbolised by a kaleidoscopic rainbow which shoots out of her right eye like a laser beam, bringing colour to her dull and lifeless world. Incidentally, Ventura’s female character bears a resemblance to another famous coming-of-age character in popular culture: Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz played by Judy Garland, which is famously known for being one of the world’s first live action coloured motion pictures, in which Dorothy goes from monochromatic Kansas to the colourful world of Oz. This concept of ‘coming-of-age’ brings to mind Crossed Trip (Humanime Series) painted by Ventura the year before, which juxtaposes the visual language of Japanese Harajuku pop culture with skulls and other demonic characters to represent the protagonist’s coming-of-age. Unlike Crossed Trip (Humanime Series) , which focuses on the individual internal emotions of one experiencing such a moment, Humanime 1 expounds on the idea of the realization that the world is not a perfect place of fairytales and unicorns, and though at times painful and horrific, is necessary in order to truly understand and appreciate our human existence.
There is no doubt that Ventura is able to bring together a myriad of compelling images through his technical virtuosity, and the artist’s brilliant mastery at assembling them into a visual feast. However, what is truly remarkable about Humanime 1 is the artist’s innate ability to suspend a fleeting moment of self-realisation and convey the intricacies of our existence and the complexity of the human condition.