Filipino artist Ronald Ventura has achieved a new personal record with the recent sale of his piece “State of Bloom,” which fetched a price nearly 20 times its lowest estimate.
If there’s one Filipino artist who’s been consistently setting new artistic records, both personal and beyond, it’s certainly Ronald Ventura. Since his piece “Greyhound” sold for $1.1 million at a 2011 Sotheby’s auction, the highest amount ever paid for Southeast Asian contemporary art, Ventura has continued to gain more international recognition for his work. Then in 2021, his piece “Party Animal” sold for roughly $2 million at Christie’s 20th and 21st Century Art Evening Sale, beating Greyhound’s record by around another million. Now, Ventura has once again set a new personal record with a recent purchase of his painting “State of Bloom” during Christie’s Hong Kong 20th and 21st Inaugural evening sale.
“State of Bloom” fetched HKD$36.6 million, roughly $4.7 million in US dollars, as Whitestone Gallery says in a news release of the sale. Christie’s expected the piece to sell for around HK$1.8 million to HK$2.8 million, making the actual price nearly 20 higher than the actual estimate.
Nature, Machinery, And Everything In Between
As Christie’s lot description of the piece writes, it “fuses elements of nature, machinery, and anything in between to convey a narrative on transformation, identity, and the intersection of organic and synthetic life.” Measuring 243.8 x 365.7 centimeters (96 x 144 inches), Ventura completed the oil painting in 2021. Like many of his past works, the painting combines a plethora of elements into a collage-like form of intricate geometric shapes, human figures, and animal iconography within a city landscape with both natural and manmade objects.
Christie’s continues to explain in its statement: “The juxtaposition of elements in the artwork – modern machinery, human figures, and natural landscapes – illustrates the overwhelming influx of wealth and how it reshapes society.”
This isn’t the first time that Ventura has explored the experiences and socio-political concepts surrounding today’s modern world through surreal imagery. “Greyhound” was also a piece that explored the relationship between the organic and inorganic: a gray-black mural of robots and animals, metal and flesh, with an almost apocalyptic feel to it. Then there’s “Party Animals,” a loud and vibrant collage of anthropomorphic figures: children with animal heads at a strange birthday party with generous heaps of food, as well as cartoonish demons and a pig—perhaps a statement on the era of excess and chaos that younger generations find themselves in.
Banner photo from the Christie’s website.
