Ronald Ventura in his studio: ‘Artmaking different from career’ (Photo by TheDiarist.ph)
Ronald Ventura opens what is planned to be a Filipino art series initiated by the Office of the First Lady Liza Araneta-Marcos, in a one-day exhibit titled Astig-Mata February 13 at the Goldenberg Mansion, San Miguel, Manila.
Lauded as among the leading figures in Southeast Asian art, and described by Sotheby’s as “the highest selling artist from Southeast Asia,” Ventura, we realized after meeting him Thursday in his studio, seems like a really cool dude. The recognition, fame, and fortune that came to him the past decade or so—the global stature—are hardly evident. He seems unassuming, simple (only the sports cars parked in the studio garage betrayed his life status), and replies off the cuff.
I ask him what I have always been curious about—does he feel pressure now from all that acclaim and record-breaking sales? “Iba naman ang artmaking from career (Artmaking is different from having a career),” he puts it simply. His talk is rather unembellished.
“Dati pa kasi sanay na ‘kong walang dictation ng commission, or hindi umaasa sa ganun (I’ve learned not to be dictated upon by commissioned work),” he says, then adds, “Hindi ako lumaki sa bagay. (I didn’t grow up dependent on material things.) Mahirap kami (We were poor).”
Ronald Ventura before his works (Photo by TheDiarist.ph)
Ventura talks to us not in a formal interview, but in side chats while the video team sets up the equipment. This afternoon, we invited leading art book author, art critic and artist Cid Reyes to do the video interview both for TheDiarist.ph and Reyes’ own video series project. (Reyes’ piece on Ronald Ventura will follow this story.)
But even only in our small talk with him, I learn interesting stuff I must have overlooked all this time. I find out that he and I are both Malabon natives. He talks about growing up in Tonsuya, not far from Concepcion or General Luna St. where my paternal grandfather’s house still is. We talk about a Malabon that’s known for brass bands, the best town band in the ’50s—“That’s why in Astig-Mata, I have the band in my work,” he tells us.
He went to high school at Malabon’s Jose Rizal High School or Arellano, then had his Bachelor of Fine Arts at the University of Santo Tomas. He tells me about how growing up could be, in his words, “a struggle. Papasok ka hindi naka sapatos, tsinelas lang, baha, tapos sasabit ka sa jeepney (You go to school not wearing shoes but slippers because of the floods, then you hop on the jeepney, hanging on).”
The bamboo or the “kawayan” in his works references the Malabon of his childhood.
Malabon, I tell him, is so rich in local color, which must have been why it bred known artists like cartoonist Nonoy Marcelo, whose cartoon art and drawings (Ikabod, Tisoy) defined a generation of Filipino pop culture, his cartoons inhabited by some denizens of Malabon, like Mang Inggo who sold kutsinta. Ventura, relatively young as he is (50 years old), smiles at the thought of kutsinta—sapin-sapin, he adds—and Nonoy, whom he’s known well about. And he adds another Malabon/Caloocan denizen—“BenCab.”
In the subsequent interview with Reyes, Ventura talks about his young days in Malabon spent playing on the street, in the road canals, to be exact, and always getting a scolding from his lola for turning a cesspool into a playground. “Mga hayop ba kayo (Are you animals),” his lola would shout at him and his playmates. That childhood memory triggered one of his most famous works, Zoomanities sculptures.
By now, the world art scene recognizes that a Ronald Ventura mind does not run in a straight line. His mind and art are a dynamic composite of images, thoughts, memories, perspectives, visions that come together on canvas, which in many instances, may not be a singular canvas, definitely not a singular medium, and approach. Time and space don’t restrict, much less define, a Ronald Ventura.
“Basta marami akong channels (I have so many channels). Palipat-lipat (I keep switching),” he says, talking like someone of the TV generation who has moved on to the computer age, even the robot and anime era.
“Like now, paano ka nabubuhay, yung relationship sa tao,” his thought about his some of his concerns trails off.
Not overwhelmed with the pressure of career, he prefers to keep his eye on the “goal,” he says, “paano ako magiging part ng creation ko (how can I be part of my creation).”
In short, this man who works at least eight hours in his studio (from the canvas to the computer to whatever he tinkers with) has not strayed away from the frenzy of creation, which, one realizes, is not confined by any time, space, or even country and culture. His works are defined, imbued, but not limited, to his country or his being a Filipino. His pulse beats with the zeitgeist of the era—“I’m not so much of the past, but I’m into the present and the future,” he says.
He is of the Filipino past and present, yet going beyond it. That could explain perhaps how the global audience is able to relate to his works. After the milestone sale of his Grayground painting at Sotheby’s 2011 Contemporary Southeast Asian Painting auction in HK ($1,082,223), Sotheby’s wrote about his art: “His tiers of references present a complex visual language of graffiti, hyperrealism, cartoonish forms and fantasy through an accessible and sophisticated vision.”
In our chat and later in his interview with Reyes, Ventura talks about layering the visual narrative, why a Ronald Ventura is no stereotypical Filipino art. “No classic image…ang daming information ngayon….you layer, build, erase, edit…it’s an overlapping process.”
The forthcoming exhibit, Astig-Mata, he says, is a play on the religious term “stigmata,” and also on “astig,” a colloquial usage to mean toughness and grit, and “mata,” the eye that sees things—in this case, seeing how it is to be a Filipino, with a rich history and present.
I note how his images of women are Caucasian-looking. He says that today’s concept of beauty and aesthetics blurs the line between fantasy and reality, meaning what used to be a mere fantasy of some women—for instance, to have a finely chiseled nose—is already a reality, owing to the advanced and accessible cosmetic surgery technology.
Indeed, his mind is unpredictably border-less.
I tell him how photographs of his works don’t do justice to them, given the miniscule laborious and interesting details, each one of which is a story unto itself.
Ronald Ventura with the author and Cid Reyes after the interviews in his studio
Cid Reyes will explore his works in TheDiarist.ph.
And by the way, there’s nothing like meeting the Ronald Ventura in person.
