Ronald Ventura: A Contemporary Visionary
Ronald Ventura has distinguished himself as a compelling visionary within contemporary Asian art over the last five years. Hailing from a background of rich storytelling and mythology within the Philippines, Ventura has rapidly expanded his idiosyncratic visual outreach to create highly recognisable and lucidly spellbinding canvases. The artist is unsurpassed at exploring the "what-if" moments of human existence: the elusive and suspenseful magical quality which emanates during unexpected intersections of reality. Every canvas given life under his brush is a carefully crafted tableau with a unique cast of characters, metaphors and motifs - an elegant dance of the figments within our imagination.

Crossed Trip (Lot 35) is part of Ventura's Humanime series where the artist combines the two concepts of "human" and "animal," or "anime" - the Japanese graphic style - to narrate the collision of human reality and an explosion of fantasy and imagination. The painting displays Ventura's trademark hyperrealist painting style fused with a pop art consciousness and incisive graffiti background. At the centre of the scene is a young girl standing amidst a rainbow pile of brightly coloured gift boxes, heart shaped cushions and stuffed toys. Balloons and flightless paper butterflies are scattered lavishly across the floor. It appears to be every little girl's dream birthday with the unopened gifts representing a multitude of possibilities in each beautifully wrapped and be-ribboned box. True to his reputation as a keen observer of contemporary life, Ronald Ventura remains firmly on the pulse of the latest pop culture phenomena, and the girl's clothing is depicted in fine Harajuku style; from the plaid bow in her hair to her ruffled tutu skirt, lacy white socks and hot pink slippers. Under her bluntly cut fringe, she radiates whimsical girlishness, a miniature Lolita in the making.

However this idyllic scene is truncated by an unanticipated twist, as Ventura deftly slips a spanner into the works. A black panther unexpectedly springs up from one of the opened gift boxes and leaps across the room, obscuring the girl's face in mid-pounce. The girl throws up her hands and goes stiff in shock, as the viewer realises simultaneously that the room has suddenly begun to meld and shift. Spiders skitter down the paisley wallpaper and even the childish stuffed toys have started to mutate into little skull-faced gremlins. As viewers, we no longer trust what we see as the thin constructs of reality start to disintegrate in front of our very eyes.

Crossed Trip: A Suspension of Disbelief
In order to fully appreciate a visual composition by Ronald Ventura, a viewer must first learn to suspend his disbelief. Within Crossed Trip, Ventura illustrates the subterfuge of reality and the hidden layers beneath our physical world. The juxtaposition created by superimposing a densely painted black panther over the hyperreal composition of the child develops a sense of one reality imposing upon another reality. (Fig.1) Each creation by Ronald Ventura occurs at the cross roads of psychological fracturing. What emerges from the rifts is a visual paradox which teases the edges of our experiential notions.

Ventura also tackles superstitions and taboos head on, as human constructs which too can be questioned and subverted. At first glance, it seems to be a black cat leaping across the girl's path, an inauspicious omen. Yet upon closer inspection, we realise the cat is actually a firmly muscled black panther, beautifully detailed and rendered in Ventura's virtuosic brushwork. With gleaming paws and tail, and a snarling visage, it leaps across the girl's path as though piercing the layers of encumbering reality, crossing the veil between worlds. The panther becomes a metaphor for a tool or vessel which allows us to bridge dimensional gaps and experience realities different from our own - the creative power and potential itself wielded by Ventura's own brush.

Similar to another composition from 2008, Zookeeper (Fig. 2, Christie's Hong Kong, May 2012) facial features and personal identity are deliberately restrained, as the artist prefers to focus instead on the hallucinations of the inner mind and the hidden aspects of human existence. By effacing the young girl with the leaping panther, viewers are left to imagine her expression and mental state. She is caught in a moment of unguarded stasis yet her surprise could quite possibly be interpreted somewhere between fear, delight and anticipation. This might reflect her real-life existence as she registers another birthday, closing the gap between a dreamladen childhood and prosaic adult reality, teetering on the threshold of a new horizon. With some luck, and not of the black cat variety, she will be swept onwards into a wonderful and brave new world.

Ventura draws inspiration from well-known and beloved fairy tales, fables and other urban myths as he remains hugely fascinated by their eternal tropes of personal and environmental metamorphosis. In Crossed Trip, what we see occurring is the split-second catalyst for an Alice in Wonderland or Wizard of Oz style of adventure - the moment of the talking White Rabbit's appearance or the Kansas tornado which lifts the heroine into uncharted territory. Where Alice had her Cheshire cat, Ventura's young ing?nue has an updated, more sophisticated totem of a black panther to draw her down the enchanted rabbit-hole (Fig. 3).

Crossed Trip undoubtedly ranks amongst Ronald Ventura's finest masterpieces for its deliberate and masterful execution, brilliantly hybrid imagery and skilful handling of existential irony. Its startling resonance captures the fragile yet hypnotic charm of a barely blooming flower or a girl caught on the cusp of adolescence by a black panther; brief flickers of infinity during a moment of temporary repose, the lull before the storm, the fabric of a young child's dream.