Provenance: Provenance: Private Collection, Manila

ABOUT THE WORK

If there is one artist that could represent the zeitgeist, it would have to be Ronald Ventura, whose paintings are intersections of the local and the global, the East and the West. In this work, one sees a cowboy silhouetted against what appears to be a skull and a pair of hooves. The conceit is repeated by a carabao and an obese man whose own head is replaced by a bull. An outline of a woman, also having hooves for feet, reveals the cityscape. These figures, set against a black background, seem to acknowledge instinctual drives that have not been extinguished despite our modernity.