Against a grooved black wall, nine mixing plates reinvented by the artist as canvasses are aligned by random paper clips. The frames feature wild images, all of which are visually connected through subtle continuities of minute line drawings or color smears. Except one - that of the profile of a grey man, looking at the bedlam. From his frame, a cloudlike sculpture with red veins is spurting out, visualizing for us a thought, as represented by the other frames. An explosion of intestines. A general feeling of decay in decomposing colors and lines suffocating in layers of brush strokes. What we are looking at is a deconstruction of the mythical Cretan labyrinth. At the center is the anomaly, the Minotaur with a brain for his testicles. This maze reeks of transgression and corruption at the most basic
level - the fusion of man and animal borne of unchecked desires. This is chaos brought by man’s preoccupation with the pleasures of the flesh. This is our nightmare, and by rendering it as mixed assemblage of paintings and sculptures, Ventura warns us that the terror has transcended the dreamscape and/or two-dimensional. This is not just a myth but a corporeal truth, its relevance enduring. We live it and are subjected to it, struggling and surrendering to a daily flood of desires and temptations. By recreating the labyrinth, the artist generously maps out for us our frailties and flaws, as represented by the body of a headless man under the Minotaur, whose network of veins drawn on his skin tell us just exactly where one can deliver that fatal blow.
- Adjani Arumpac