RONALD VENTURA RONALD VENTURA

RONALD VENTURA

RONALD VENTURA
RONALD VENTURA

Born in 1973 in Manila, the Philippines, where he continues to live and work, Ronald Ventura ranks as one of the most acclaimed artists of his generation in Southeast Asia. Shortly after graduating from the University of Santo Tomas, Manila (B.F.A) in 1993, he began to work as an art instructor at College of Fine Arts & Design, his alma mater. Ventura’s paintings and sculptures are now among the most recognizable images of contemporary art in Southeast Asia with their unique combinations of figurative motifs. His work features a complex layering of images and styles, ranging from hyperrealism to cartoons and graffiti. Ventura takes the layering process in his work as a metaphor for the multifaceted national identity of the Philippines. Over the centuries, the profound influences of various occupying powers — Spain, Japan, and the United States — along with the underlying indigenous culture, have produced a complex and at times uneasy sense of identity. Ventura explores this historical and psychic phenomenon through a dialogue of images evoking East and West, high and low, old and young — seen, for example, in allusions to Old Master paintings or Japanese and American cartoons. He draws our attention to the “second skin” of cultural signifiers that each person carries with him, however unwittingly. Ventura views skin as an expressive surface — written on with tattoos, concealed under layers of imagery, or exploding outwards to reveal an inner world of fantasy and conflict.

ARTWORKS

ARTICLES

The Enigmatic Artistry of Ronald Ventura|Solo Exhibition at New Art Museum Singapore

2023.11.15
INTERVIEW

ONLINE EXHIBITIONS

RONALD VENTURA: An Introspective
Online Exhibition
August 7, 2021

MAJOR EXHIBITIONS, COLLECTIONS

EXHIBITION

2018
Comic Lives : Whitestone Ginza New Gallery, Tokyo
Territorial Crossing : Primo Marella Gallery, Milan, Italy
2017
Territorial Terror : West Gallery, Quezon City, PHL
Wild State of Mind : Tyler Rollins Fine Art Gallery, New York
Shadow Forest, Encounters and Explorations : The Metropolitan Museum of Manila
2016
Project: Finding Home : Museum of Contemporary Arts, Taipei, Taiwan
Talisman, Anito Kristo : Ronac Art Center, Magallanes, Makati City, Manila
Ronald Ventura-Recent Works : Primae Noctis Art Gallery, Lugano, Switzerland
2015
The Hunting Ground : Primo Marella Gallery, Milan
Ronald Ventura-Recent Works : Taiwan Art Fair, World Trade Center, Taipei
2014
Bulul-Ronald Ventura and the traditional art of the Philippines- : Museo delle Culture, Lugano
2013
Voids and Cages : Perrotin Gallery, Hong Kong
2012
Recyclables : Singapore Tyler Print Institute, Singapore
 

etc.

IMAGES

MAIL MAGAZINE

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