Lot description
Mask signed and dated 2020 (lower left) oil on canvas, fiberglass, resin artwork: 24" x 18" (61 cm x 46 cm) frame: 41" x 34" (104 cm x 86 cm) Accompanied by a certificate signed by the artist confirming the authenticity of this lot The world came to a sudden halt during the early months of 2020 due to the still ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. With the advent of lockdowns to curb the spread of the virus, artists have turned to art as a cathartic avenue for emotions and ideas to powerfully cascade in a time of repressed mobility and interaction. In the case of the work at hand by Ronald Ventura, the lauded contemporary artist depicts a figure, likely a healthcare worker, wearing a respirator, which is a common sight of the times. Here, Ventura poignantly evokes the suffocating anxieties and desolation attached to the uncertainty of living amid a pandemic. Underneath the masks we are all conformed to wear are the faces of humanity worn out with hopelessness and helplessness. In his September 27, 2020 Philstar article titled ‘Ronald Ventura’s paradise alley,’ Igan D’Bayan asked: “To what extent has the pandemic altered Ventura’s imagery and sense of aesthetics?” Ventura answered: “Early on, I was already painting figures whose faces were covered. Even before, you could already see today’s events as eventually happening. But the gas-masked figures in my early works were supposed to be symbolic of a sort of toxicity in information, a pollution of thought,” to which D’Bayan remarks, “Now they have manifested as something literal and all-too-real.” This is Ronald Ventura’s image of the ‘new normal.’ (A.M.)
