Trained as an animator, visual artist Olan Ventura, with his eye-popping impressions of the naked human form, draws inspiration from the sensual side of life—or so we all think

First things first—Rolando is not Ronaldo. Nor is he Roldan.

This is crystal, as our subject Rolando “Olan” Ventura ticks his and his painter-siblings’ anagrammatic names off his fingers.

That’s confusing, I venture.

“Ha?”

The tone spells slight annoyance.

Obviously, the middle child—and artist—is tired of explaining.

“’Yung ibang tao, ‘pag tumitingin ng painting—akala nila may pakiramdam. Flat naman ‘yun, wala na siyang ibig sabihin. Mahirap din magpaliwanag. Kaya nga nagpinta e.” (Some people think paintings have feelings. But paintings are flat. They don’t really mean anything. It’s difficult to keep on explaining. That’s why I painted in the first place.)

Ventura removes the eroticism usually attached to nude figures. It’s as if the subjects don’t even know they are naked.

The man has a point.

In fact, he’s made several. Whether conscious or not, the University of the East graduate’s paintings—always figurative, never abstract—ultimately make some form of social commentary, in the way they depict people.

In Pediophobia, a massive teddy bear, all stuffing, no spirit, encroaches upon a little boy with his face buried in his hands—are children so powerless?

In Tupac, a teenage Pinoy “brotha” has all a rapper’s props down pat—baggy shorts, Cavaliers jersey, dollar-shaped bling, headscarf, Westside hand gesture, even a gun to the head. Could copying kill?

And in Clown 1, a joker vomits out a stream of cartoon characters—another motif in Ventura’s work—indicating a possible fascination with the creative yet commercial.

The desire to speculate is natural, given the paintings’ ability to draw the viewer in with their solid, saturated blocks of color, and illuminated quality. As Ventura shares, his practice of treating the canvas with the plaster-type material gesso makes the surface very smooth—perhaps, making his oil and acrylic paint hues pop.

The vividness serves him well in his renditions of the human form. Ever since Ventura’s first solo show Rental Spaces (2003), he’s been putting flesh—and taupe and beige—to canvas, many times over. The irony, though, is how these human figures seem somewhat unreal—a result, too, of the work’s artificial smoothness, as well as Ventura’s drawing style, honed from years as an animator. Of course, there are the kitschy props, like the saving/suffocating gas masks, a William Tell apple atop his wife’s head, and Finding Nemo on the TV in the living room, as the painter himself sits in an inflatable pool with his two equally naked sons.

It is with this domestic setting that Ventura removes the eroticism usually attached to nude figures. It’s as if the subjects don’t even know they are naked. And when they do try to cover up with an assortment of masks, the rest of their bodies still remain exposed.

Such is the case in Ventura’s X-Paused, where he found himself finding inspiration at a nightclub—but not that type of inspiration. Drawn to the stories of bargirls and waiters—with their impoverished backgrounds, complicated relationships, and nightly masquerading—he then convinced them to sit for him at his studio, and take guide photographs for his initial sketches, as he often does.

Uneven, unanticipated methods like these make Olan Ventura one rousing, spirited figure in local contemporary art.