{"status":true,"msg":{"data":{"id":3576,"auction_id":6,"set_id":8,"lot_number":"172","artist":"Ronald Ventura (b. 1973)","title":"Profile","starting_price":3000000,"signed_dated":"signed and dated 2010 (lower right)","medium":"mixed media","size":"72\" x 48\" x 11 1/2\" (183 cm x 122 cn x 29 cm)","property":null,"coa":null,"provenance":"Private Collection, Italy","exhibited":null,"literature":"Ventura, Ronald, Primo Giovanni Marella, Adjani Arumpac, Alice G. Guillermo, Daniela Palazzoli, and Igan D'Bayan. Realities: Ronald Ventura. Bologna: Damiani editore, 2011. Full-color photograph and painting description on page 73. Woon Tai Ho. \"Contemporary Hits.\" The Business Times, May 14, 2010. Full-color photograph on page 29.","write_up":"“I came into a place mute of all light,
\nWhich bellows as the sea does in a tempest,
\nIf by opposing winds ‘t is combated.
\nThe infernal hurricane that never rests
\nHurtles the spirits onward in its rapine;
\nWhirling them round, and smiting, it molests them.
\nWhen they arrive before the precipice,
\nThere are the shrieks, the plaints, and the laments,
\nThere they blaspheme the puissance divine.
\nI understood that unto such a torment\nThe carnal malefactors were condemned,\nWhose reason subjugates to appetite.”
\n- DANTE’S INFERNO, FROM THE DIVINE COMEDY
In her essay \"Human Study and the Politics of Gender,\" published in the book Realities: Ronald Ventura, the eminent art critic Alice G. Guillermo writes: \"With his 2008 National University of Singapore solo show, \"Mapping the Corporeal,\" the artist [Ventura] seems to leave behind as an episode the idealized nudes coming into their own and focuses on other hitherto untouched aspects of the human animal: his overwhelming carnal appetites that distort his human nature. This direction has led to grotesqueries and monstrous creatures with exposed viscera where the cravings take over the higher faculties….\"
It is in this relevant quote from Guillermo that Ventura steers this work titled Profile. The work forms part of a series of exploits for Ventura regarding the correlation between humanity and the modern-day inferno we inhabit, which strongly began in his iconic and highly acclaimed 2005 exhibition Human Study, mounted in both his home country and Sydney, Australia.
Here, we see a naked, decapitated human body with its veins and arteries exposed. Canvases seemingly appear as replacements for its head, where the human brain, the faculty for rationality, dwells. The overall work sees a ghastly amalgamation of the macabre and surrealism.
Harrowing images of Ventura's trademark surrealism populate the canvases. One painting in the center particularly fills in for the man's head; it depicts a centaur (tikbalang in Philippine mythology), characterized by its virile bearing, brawny physique, and the horrifying ballooning of its testes.
Ventura paints an overall image of a human profile of carnal desires taking over rationality and willpower. It becomes more compelling when situated within the larger context of machismo, misogyny, and the commodification and exploitation of women’s bodies prevailing in a macho-feudal and patriarchal society. The man’s veins and arteries have blackened, seemingly being poisoned by lechery. A half-open zipper runs through the center of his body, revealing the animal inside when expanded. The image of the centaur, representing the insatiable lust for flesh, has taken over the man's brain, symbolizing how animalistic instincts and impulses have driven him into savagery and assault towards other humans, and thus, trampling on their inherent and inviolable dignity.
More tormentingly, images of teddy bears and rainbows appear. Is Ventura painfully alluding to child molestation?
The images in the respective canvases appear behind ominous fumes of smoke akin to a horror movie setting or a psycho-killer thriller film. They seemingly appear as ghostly images from Dante's Inferno, particularly the narrative where Dante and Virgil leave Limbo, the first circle of hell, and enter the second circle, where \"carnal sinners who subordinate reason to desire\" are condemned to eternity.
Ventura depicts an image of humanity metamorphosing into an infernal incubus.
A conundrum and riot of images capture anarchic tension, the Armageddon of humanity towards its profanity. A lighter can be seen in the lower-left corner of the work. It may signify two things: igniting the inferno of savage carnal hunger or suppressing it and enkindling the flame of rationality, the impulse to safeguard and foster others' autonomy and sanctity.
Lastly, Ventura grippingly asks through this work: Is humanity becoming the beasts it once feared? (A.M.)","lot_group":"PAINTING","lot_details_html":null,"alias":null,"hp":3900000,"bp":0.168,"isWithdrawn":0,"accounting_hp":3900000,"userBid":8716,"isPaid":0,"userId":22,"lot_status":"SOLD","isDone":1,"bid_history_id":null,"reserve_price":null,"hammer_price":4555200,"fav":0},"image":[{"id":3863,"img_url":"https://leongallery.sgp1.digitaloceanspaces.com/v2/auction/6/8/lot/172.jpg","isFeatured":1},{"id":3864,"img_url":"https://leongallery.sgp1.digitaloceanspaces.com/v2/auction/6/8/lot/172a.jpg","isFeatured":0}]},"increment":[2200000,2400000,2600000,2800000,3000000,3200000,3400000,3600000,3800000,4000000,4200000,4400000,4600000,4800000,5000000,5500000,6000000,6500000,7000000,7500000,8000000,8500000,9000000,9500000,10000000,11000000,12000000,13000000,14000000,15000000,16000000,17000000,18000000,19000000,20000000],"prev":171,"next":173,"count_bid":0,"bid_history":[],"tokenExpired":1}