Olan Ventura, fresh off an exhibit in Singapore, returns with Negative Light, a telling depiction of vice and deviance in society. Ventura displays such breakaways from social convention in “negative mode,” playing with the tonal inversions of his subjects’ light and dark areas. Inspired by conversations he’s held with people who work in nightclubs and bars, Ventura notes that the themes presented in his works are really happening and that he is painting them as he saw them. Culled from studies of “positive” images, Ventura reverses them into X-ray-like images where viewers could see them in a different light, and then revealing them as the original positive images through a video presentation. He says that he didn’t need to make any new adjustments in the approach; he just needed to find a reason, an outlet in which he could interpret these “taboo” situations, including a large-scale installation of cigarette butts made from plastic resin and acrylic paints. “I try to discover what is new to me, what I learned from my experiences and the experiences of other people,” says Ventura.
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