TRADITION TAKES A SELFIE WITH DISRUPTION

Filipino contemporary artists Olan Ventura and Ronson Culibrina recently mounted back-to-back exhibitions at the Goldenberg Mansion in Malacañang.

- IGAN D’BAYAN

The pairing of these two artists both redefining in their own way how we view Filipino heritage, identity and aesthetics- feels like an apt conversation between past and present, chaos and beauty. As someone once mused, "It would be interesting if Tradition took a selfie with Disruption, and still looked stunning."

OLAN VENTURA'S FRACTURED BLOOMS

At first glance, Olan Ventura's still lifes appear familiar, even classical. But a closer look reveals a different story: Ventura's floral compositions are anything but still. In "Prismatic Petals," his flowers are dissected and interrupted, sliced into pieces by bands of vibrant color that evoke the glitch of a faulty screen or printer error. His work is a meditation on the fragmented nature of contemporary existence, where beauty and order are continually interrupted by the chaos of technology and modern life.

"Minsan kailangan mong sirain ang beauty para makagawa ng ibang uri ng beauty," Ventura says of his process. His bold, deconstructed blooms force viewers to engage with the tension between nature and artificiality, between the calm of tradition and the frenzied pace of today's world.

One of the standout pieces in the exhibition is a large-scale diptych, where delicate petals and stems are bisected by vertical bars of color. The composition feels digitally manipulated, as though printer has malfunctioned mid-task. The effect is unsettling, but oddly mesmerizing.

The "Prismatic Petals" collection can be seen as a commentary on the instability of beauty in the digital age, where every image we consume is subject to disruption, interference, and reinterpretation.