Ronald Ventura: Voyeur apes & painted rides
The trip starts here.
Curator Ruel Caasi explains why artist Ronald Ventura is fascinated with anything to do with movement and mobility: cars, luggage, shoes, etc. The trip is actually more meta than physical. To get from point A to Z is not as easy as getting inside one of those fancy sports cars. There are the twilit zones in between, the neither-here-nor-there.
According to Caasi, “(Ventura’s current artistic arc is) an instance again of blurring the boundaries between art and life, what’s out there in reality and what’s contained in the museum or gallery space. Art is all about breaking boundaries, challenging our distinction between spaces, being mobile, shifting, and flexible. So while some may bring their art outside, like street art or public art, this is the reverse where things from outside are brought into the museum or gallery space.”
Thus, in the past few months, Ronald has mounted three shows that explore his philosophy of mobility: going from Bonifacio Global City (Metropolitan Museum of Manila) to Ayala Ave. (Ayala Museum, Salcedo Auctions) to wherever is next: probably Tokyo or somewhere in Europe. This is what consumes the artist at the moment. After being locked down with the rest of us during the pandemic (a marooned man with a fleet of silenced machines), the artist wants to go on the road to nowhere and everywhere — passing by human zoos and animal parks inhabited by Renaissance images as well as anime, mythical, and cartoon characters.
‘Quick turns on hyper highways’ at the Museum
Ronald Ventura thinks that categories in art are sometimes arbitrary. In these contemporary times, where genres are bleeding into each other, anything — cars, shoes, fashion — can be materials for art-making or considered to be, in themselves, art.
For The M show, the point was to bring the street inside the museum space, to break down boundaries and classifications, to destroy categories.
The pandemic was when the automobile became a jump-off point to the type of art the artist wanted to make. He started thinking of cars as sculptural pieces, but at the same time functional. He created art prints with cars as the subject. He painted on car wraps. The possibilities are endless for him: what he has done and can do with cars, he can do the same in the field of art. For him, there is no distinction.
Ventura uses carbon fiber as a painting surface aside from canvas because it’s lightweight, hangable. The point is to experiment. He uses colors with varying degrees of transparency and opacity for the carbon fiber material to stand out. It is still painting, but the surface is three-dimensional, akin to sculptures. The work is, according to the artist, “a mix of dimensions.”
The artist also meditates not just on the forms of supercars themselves, but also on the logo or icon of each brand, becoming a jump-off point for the fusion of mythology and motion: a horse at full gallop, a charging bull, Pegasus winging away with power and grace. The narratives are there: always a battle between freedom and immobility.
‘Beastmaster’ at Salcedo auctions
Why employ carbon fiber as material? Because it is being used in sportscars to make them faster. By using carbon fiber as art material, Ventura is making the material itself embody his current subject — cars as a metaphor for poetic mobility and creativity in motion.
The title “Beastmaster” was lifted from a sword and sorcery film released in 1982. He mulled over the term itself “beast + master” when looking at his compositions: a case of man trying to control powerful beasts (the prancing horse and charging bull in sportscar iconography) or seemingly indomitable machines.
Is it the man controlling the beast or the machine, or the latter having dominion over the man? Who is really the master and who is the follower? Is the man the beast himself? Is he ultimately the machine? Do the animals or the mechanical objects exhibit anthropomorphic, humanistic tendencies themselves. Does the man take on the characteristics of the very being or thing he is trying to control? Are they one and the same?
The artist meditated upon these distinctions and their subsequent dismantling. The show at Salcedo was a continuing thread on his preoccupation with the Nature of Man brought forth in previous series such as “Zoomanity” and “Humanime.” The events of the past few years have forced us to re-evaluate what defines a man when confronted with a society in peril, in a Post-Truth world.
The paintings on carbon fiber reflect a world where a speeding car takes on sculptural essentiality — a reaction to the long bouts of lockdown imposed upon the entire world. The road stretches before our imagination.
The pieces convey a sense of the blurring of distinction among what is human, what is animal and what is machine. They solidify his observation of a society where differences and categories are being torn down, rendered obsolete. All things — from imagery to even truth — have taken on the quality of subjectivity, flexibility and malleability.
‘Beast watcher’ at Ayala Museum
In February and March, A sculpture of an ape head with an anito body (accompanied by its bull sidekick) lorded it over the space fronting Ayala Museum, surveying Makati Avenue and The Link carpark with a telescope. Hunter? Voyeur? Lurker? Sightseer? Was it a case of the artwork-as-view viewing the viewer?
This piece [“Anito Ape + Zoomanity (Beast Master)”] is reminiscent of the “Watching the Watchmen” show in 2012 where contemporary sculptures of Ifugao rice gods stare at visitors like some divine reckoning. In the case of “Anito Ape” painted with the artist’s palette of caution colors (yellow and black), Ronald Ventura mediates on NFT culture and social media, how images from the past (anitos, bul-ols) can be combined with their counterparts in the present (Bored Apes, anime, cartoons), creating a third entity. The ape sculpture is about to step on a banana peel which foreshadows the figure’s slapstick slip. The folly of slipping into a lurker’s mentality, perhaps? Another sculpture mounted in Ayala Museum was that of a black rhinoceros with human feet and yellow horn [“Hyper Beast (Rhino)] trudging toward its appointed end. An art car (Porsche 911 Cabriolet) hyped-up with paintings of a rider on a horse — juxtaposed with lightning, pedestrian crossing, Richie Rich and other images — can be described as a continuation of Ventura’s exploration of art as an agent of motion and not just an object of stasis. The Ayala Museum show was a combination of public art gravitas and contemporary art waggishness.
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The ride continues for an artist who unceasingly tries to capture the poetry of speeding muses.
