The Real, the Imagined and Immediate bleeding into the Outer Limits of the Twilight Zone as documented by Loony Tunes and Funny Comics to show how Tradition, sadly, is our own cross to bear.
Such is the world presented by Filipino artist and auction star Ronald Ventura.
The genesis of this exhibition titled “Endless Resurrection” currently on view until Oct. 25 at Tyler Rollins gallery in New York City goes beyond Ventura’s studio in a subdivision named after a saint who lived a monastic life of prayer and penance. (It’s Saint Dominic, if you should ask…. wait… that would be getting ahead of our story).
Our interview takes place in the studio — a constellation of pictures, drawings, and sculptures around us. A cloud-headed man here; a disemboweled Disney character there. Two stuffed monitor lizards seemingly chase each other up the walls. Ventura takes his coffee and shares the origin of his most recent works.
It takes place up the hills of Cutud in San Fernando, Pampanga, in the direst of afternoon heat-spells of a Good Friday. The artist stands transfixed as he watches the procession of whipped flesh and cross-carrying, a showcase of self-flagellation for the hooded or masked penitents. Some will even undergo crucifixion atop a makeshift Calvary surrounded by a platoon of centurions and hangers-on — it’s a yearly pageant of atonement for one’s sins. It also serves as their “panata” or vow as a way to give thanks for an answered prayer. Ventura takes out his film and video cameras and records the ongoing reenactment of the Passion of the Christ, stores the composition in a sketchbook in his head.
(A bit of background: This practice has its roots in Europe in the 4th century, and brought by the Spaniards along with the entire bundle of Christian beliefs and teachings when they conquered our tiny archipelago in the 16th century, and morphed over time into what it is today.)
Some penitents walk in Incredible Hulk masks or Hotrod Harley Davidson bandanas (like castoffs from Counting Cars), scarring themselves with bamboo shingles tied at the end of a rope, or sharp sticks with leather handles. The centurions are in DIY helmets and armed with hammers bought from the local Ace hardware. Devotees, gawkers and blood on the streets trail them.
Ventura appropriates the imagery of the flagellation and crucifixion to create a suite of paintings; a life-size sculpture of a man carrying a “cloud cross”; video installation (documenting the entire proceedings of the Lenten ritual), and flashing photo-stills (random images, straight photography) inside the gallery dark room for his most recent show at Tyler Rollins.
“The idea of resurrection, this endless return and recurring… I want that to be a metaphor for my art practice,” Ventura explains. “Why do I keep coming back to painting and making art? Paintings, in a way, are also resurrected.”
Resurrected as well as punctuated by monsters from European art masterpieces, images from vintage carnival posters, advertising slogans and comic-book texts. This is not just an arbitrary strategy on the part of the artist. Every image, object or written phrase communicates how mad, strange, unique the mindset of the Filipino flagellant is. Is he truly a devotee or just a cog in the mad parade?
It is an attempt to present chunks of histories of art, faith, and pop culture. This gore-fest resurrected each year in the Philippines and revaluated by the artist in his mad, methodical, and visually eloquent take on the bizarre yet breathtaking backyard we call home.
Ventura says, “This exhibition is about how faith, tradition and the Catholic Way have affected not just how Filipinos live, but more crucially how we think as well.”
He does not condemn the Pinoy tradition. He sees it as a way for Filipinos of giving themselves hope in the endless seasons of suffering and withering poverty: the belief in overcoming, coming back, and the ultimate triumph over death.
But these paintings show how some practitioners have become cartoon-like in their exaggeration and corruption of a never-ending ritual. Cartoon dogs and monkeys, thought bubbles, comic sound effects disrupt the parade of hyper-realistic penitents herded by centurions with their stage-play helmets and local hardware store hammers. The bloodiest of traditions juxtaposed with a bit of slapstick and lowbrow TV humor. It’s almost as if life were invaded by dark, comic forces.
Heavy themes, yes. But the new paintings are so damn enchanting and inviting. Seemingly saying…
Step.
Right.
Up.
* * *
Tyler Rollins Fine Art gallery is at 529 W 20th St, 10W, New York. For information, visit http://www.trfineart.com.