Ronald Ventura is already a record breaker. When his piece, ‘Grayground’ went on sale at Sotheby’s Modern and Contemporary Southeast Asian Paintings auction in Hong Kong in April last year, the result astounded onlookers. Met by a whirlwind of bids, the piece sold for $1.1 million, the highest for Sotheby’s in its bracket. A year later and now back in Hong Kong, Ventura opened his solo show “Voids and Cages” at Galerie Perrotin this spring. Combining disconnected imagery and references, his work is a mixture of traditional craft and tales, informed by a wide array of artistic inspirations from old masters to Japanese anime and horror films. Ventura, who one days hopes to open a contemporary art museum in Manila, has recently begun the painful business of buying his own art – which is appreciating rapidly in value – back from buyers for his own collection. Today, he holds on to one piece from each solo exhibition so he won’t be stung again. With his work in high demand from solo shows across America, Europe and all of Asia, Ventura is one to watch, particularly for aficionados of southeast Asian art, which is growing in influence each week.
