BOBRO’S WORLD TOUR JAKARTA
Solo presentation by Ronald Ventura
Yavuz Gallery is proud to present Bobro’s World Tour Jakarta, a solo presentation by Filipino multi-media artist Ronald Ventura, at the Spot sector of Art Jakarta 2019.
One of the leading figures in Southeast Asian contemporary art, Ventura presents a multi-sensory experience, creating a space where art immerses deeply in an environment of amusement, fun, and leisure. Bobro’s World Tour Jakarta simulates an entertainment lounge, equipped with a video room and complemented by couches and a serving of drinks, but also made hybrid with a retail store through an installation of racks displaying goods. Partly inspired by the idea of a ‘man cave’, and partly by venues dedicated to gathering and socialisation, it is in this setting that Ventura locates pieces that represent some of the key tropes he explores in his practice.
The enclosure references social spaces and key aspects of contemporary life—from consumer culture, to practices of rest and recreation, to media and technology. A spectacle of sights and sounds mediates between art objects and its audience, stimulating the senses but at the same time invites respite and relaxation to induce a liminal state between activity and passivity. The paintings and sculptures take the viewers into a realm where humans morph into beasts and the figurative melds with abstracted forms, a fantastic world that quickly fades as soon as one realises its presence within a context of manufactured fun and entertainment. The same confrontation with reality happens in many other alternative and make-believe worlds that technology has given rise to—seemingly hyperreal and powerful, only to find themselves as mere projections and simulations. The entire set-up and the experience it aims to produce may also be seen as a scaled-down version of an art fair itself, a social event where artistic discourse, market forces, and an atmosphere of spectacle and frenzy all coincide in one place.