Untitled
signed and dated 2006 (lower right)
oil on canvas
24” x 18” (61 cm x 46 cm)

In Ventura’s characteristic and well-honed layering style, anime characters swirl around the central image. The effect is at once elegant and haunting, melancholy and vicious.

Figures resembling biblical references like the crucifixion mingle and merge with colourful, whimsical motifs. The incongruity is jarring, eerie an disorienting: a nightmare in which a circus show breaks into a classical museum, creating another uncanny dreamlike concoction of motifs, metaphors and cultural references.

With his complex layering of images and styles, Ventura weaves a dynamic narrative through intermingling stories in religion, popular culture and colonial influence. Ventura explores and captures this uneasy sense of identity by amalgamating Eastern and Western influences, high and low culture, and old and young references (old masterpieces versus cartoons).