ABOUT THE WORK

Olan Ventura’s oeuvre brings to light his fascination for negatives, and the undertones that lie therein. In the numerous plays on inverses and negatives spawned from the artist’s canvas, a variety of ideas and themes have come about — most of which rooted in qualia, perception, and philosophy. This work by the brilliant contemporary, entitled Dark Smoke, is among the artist’s creations that juxtapose negative and positive in a single work — mirroring each other as if to lay focus on their contrast. In the depiction of subjects opposite each other, we are left to scrutinize the character of each rendition, or ‘the negativity’ of the inverse. Here, we give way to the idea of opposites, and how they may (or may not) be one in the same. According to Olan Ventura, everything comes from negatives. The idea is that our nature, in all our sinfulness and malice, is born from the negative — and yet, this destructive character of ours, in all its unsightliness, is what makes us human. The play on the idea of ‘negatives and positives’ brings to the fore a paradoxical conflict between good and evil, giving us an analogous understanding of such through perspective. In the work, what is negative is not necessarily evil, and what is positive is not necessarily good — it is in our perception that we are left to justify for ourselves, and it is in the contrast that we may decipher which may be what. The use of opposites (positive and negative) allows the audience to bring forth scrutiny, begging the question ‘What is good?’ The conclusion of which, returning once again to the idea of perspective, where the subjectivity of the very idea is emphasized.