RONALD C. VENTURA
Feature Artist
Many say that since Ronald Ventura opened his first major solo exhibition abroad, entitled Mapping The Corporeal (NUS Museum, Singapore, 2008), his career development and reputation has witnessed a truly stunning success. Renowned as a hyper-realist painter Ventura is able to combine images of fantasy and animation, often resulting in a collection of works with multi-layers of graphic elements.
Ventura’s Zoomanities series, also continue to morph and appear in his recent exhibitions, “waging war on preconceived notions of what sculpture is and what sculptures shouldn’t be”, making it clear that these mutant assemblages are crucial to his narrative of artistic expression. His three dimensional forms, are a necessity to his stage. His stories are often about aspects of modern man and his present values, playing with revered objects, combined with symbols, and commercial toys posed on a miniature stage, as if part of an re-enactment, and dramatizes a scene.
Ronald Ventura graduated in 1993 with a BFA, Major in Painting, from the University of Santo Tomas in Manila, where he also taught later. He was a finalist in the 1999 Taiwan International Biennale Painting and Drawing Competition. In 2002, his work was given the Juror’s Choice in the Philip Morris Philippine Art Awards. The following year, he was conferred with the Cultural Centre of the Philippines Thirteen Artists Award, a much coveted honour by the art community in the Philippines. In 2005, the reputable, Ateneo de Manila’s Art Museum inaugurated the Ateneo Artists Awards, bestowed the contemporary art prize to Ventura, who was also awarded the Ateneo Art Gallery Sydney Studio Residency Grant, exhibiting at the Cross Art Projects, Sydney, Australia in November the same year.
In 2007, the artist participated as resident artist at Artesan Gallery + Studio in Singapore. That same period, Ronald opened his first solo exhibition at Artesan, entitled Antipode: The Human Side. It was during this period when Ventura was invited by the NUS Museum to exhibit Mapping The Corporeal: Ronald Ventura, as well as when the idea of A Duad in Play was initiated by Artesan, and then shown in 2010 at the Institute of Contemporary Arts LASALLE. In 2008, Ventura was bestowed the Award of Excellence by the 9th OITA Asian Sculpture Exhibition Open Competition 2008 in Japan.
