Lot description
Ronald Ventura (b.1973) Embrace signed and dated 2006 (upper right) oil on canvas 63” x 40” (160 cm x 102 cm) With regards to the supreme mastery of technique, there seems to be no one who can equal the virtuosity of Ronald Ventura — a quality that is personified by this work. Painted in 2006, Embrace features one of Ventura’s famed luminescent nudes: more alabaster than flesh. Evoked through a high degree of realism, the figure casts a shadow on an undefined background, which makes him visually jut out of the pictorial space into the space of the viewer. He hugs a transparent cocoon to his chest, creased and layered at places. This seems to be the translucent shell he has escaped out of, and yet, the figure reveals a tenderness to the old compartment, as if conflicted with the notion of freedom. The work, brilliant and coruscating in monochrome, is an allegory of how people can be fixated with and nostalgic about what have restrained them.
