We are being watched, I tell Ronald Ventura inside his studio in Quezon City. Like the idiomatic ducks in a row, the artist’s bul-ol sculptures stare at us as if it were some divine reckoning. Like the elders in old sci-fi adventure movies. They be watchers and here be intruders.
The sculptures, along with large scale paintings and installations, are the centerpieces in Ventura’s “Watching the Watchmen” show, which opens tomorrow at The UP Vargas Museum.
“The exhibition is my own homage to our indigenous culture,” Ventura explains. “Whenever I travel abroad, I marvel at how museums particularly in Europe have preserved artifacts of ancient civilizations — the materials used, the myths they embody, the power of their imagery. Ano ba ang puwede nating maiambag sa pagsulong ng sining sa Pilipinas?”
Ronald Ventura is one of the most acclaimed contemporary artists in our time. He continuously registers stratospheric figures in auction houses; his “Grayground” painting sold for HK$8,420,000 or P46,995,832.65 at the Sotheby’s Modern and Contemporary Southeast Asian Paintings auction in Hong Kong last year, setting an astounding record. He mounts shows in New York and Milan — Tyler Rollins Fine Art and Primo Marella Gallery, respectively; more shows in Asia and Europe are in the works (his “Recyclables” opens on Nov. 16 at the Singapore Tyler Print Institute or STPI). And he appears on the cover of the latest issue of Flash Art magazine (other notable artists who have done so included Takashi Murakami and Paul McCarthy).
Ventura chose to create sculptures of a truly Filipino icon: the bul-ol or the Ifugao Rice God as subject. The bul-ol is rife with symbolism (wealth, well-being, a bountiful harvest) and with it comes ritualistic and ceremonial baggage. It is bathed with pig’s blood, made to stand guard in the granaries, etc. One artist replicated bul-ol sculptures, making a social commentary about the Bul-ol as something alienated from its ritualistic power and relegated into a decorative, domesticated prop.
“Nawala na ’yung sacredness ng bagay,” Ventura points out. “I, on the other hand, am simply exploring the bul-ol as pure object or form. I deliberately refrained from going to the Northern part of the country to learn how the pieces are made. If Leonardo Da Vinci had the Vitruvian Man as the ideal form of the human being, my goal was to take the bul-ol as the counterpart of sorts.”
And Ventura has created different sculptures of the bul-ol (in pairs or as standalones) with different variations:
There are anatomical figures (with sinews of muscles and structural bones); tattooed (with Western-style Jesus slash skull slash tribal patterns); cubist (not Picasso-like, but more CGI-inspired — call it “digital cubism”); and angel-versus-devil (St. Michael battling his enemy like in the gin label made by Fernando Amorsolo), among others.
You could call it “jazz up your bul-ol” (remember the “Jazz Up Your Levi’s” campaign in the ’90s?), although Ventura’s take is more respectful, purely driven by sculptural shapes and contours, and as a curious outsider peering into a more mysterious world.
“This is also my way of taking something of ceremonious value in the Filipino culture and rendering it as pop, as collectible (like Mattel or McFarlane), as infused with the images of today (from Final Fantasy to Transformers).”
Now that’s contemporarily mythic, since the CGI-icons of today have supplanted the myths of yore — old gods making way for new gods, from Joseph Campbell to Michael Bay.
CLOUDS TASTE METALLIC
The artist believes that everything comes from a cloud of inspiration.
“For me, images are all around us, ripe for the plucking. My job as an artist is to take whatever I need from this artistic ether, not to invent something entirely new (there’s no such thing), but to reconstruct, remake and re-model old images, and in effect to make them say new things.”
The past few years have found Ronald Ventura putting together seemingly disparate imagery (classical drawings, cartoons, graffiti; 3D renderings, line drawings, flat, semi-flat; religious icons, Disney and anime characters, medical imagery, etc.), resulting in mash-ups and artworks that can be seen as a metaphor of the world we live in. A co-existence, a not-so arbitrary relationship of forms.
For the old guards who worship Tradition, this chaotic brew is a no-no. But for those who are friends of the New, Ventura’s artworks have something to say. It is inevitably a question of appreciation.
Ronald Ventura’s strategy is to present everything from indigenous iconography to Western aesthetics to anime to you-tell-me. Everything is still a ladder to something… a ladder to the clouds up there.
Still the bul-ol sculptures stare.
Now, we are watching the watchmen watch us.
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Ronald Ventura’s “Watching the Watchmen” exhibit is on view from Nov. 13 to Dec. 14 at the ground floor lobby and West Wing Gallery of UP Vargas Museum, Roxas Ave., UP Campus, Diliman, Quezon City. For information, call 928-1927 or e-mail vargasmuseum@gmail.com.