Some may find it futuristic, a walking Star Wars robot or a cyborg, a human concealed under that ridiculous zipped-up body-suit (bullet-proofed?) and to give it anonymity, a head strapped with a high-tech-looking scanner (which still needs some manual adjustment, or there must be some focal malfunctioning). With bio-tech advances, limbs can be regrown and other body parts cultivated, much like the way starfish and salamander regenerate. These soldier robots later seem to morph into the Bul-uo (Ifugao rice gods) manifestations. But it’s moot if Ronald Ventura is more interested in sci-fi or the more prosaic story of man killing each other and the ecstasy of power! This work from The Cross Art Project: Human Study done in Sydney, Australia, won Ronald Ventura the coveted Ateneo Art Award in 2005. He is among Southeast Asia’s highest priced artist, when his Grayground painting sold for USD1.1mil premium at Sotheby’s Hongkong auction in 2011. Ronald Ventura had won the Grand Prize of the Shell National Art Students competition (1990) and the Juror’s Award in the Metrobank awards (1992) even before he graduated with a BFA majoring in Painting from the St Tomas University in Manila in 1993. He taught at his alma mater for nine years and staged his first solo, All Souls Day, in 2000. He decided to go fulltime after that. In the 2001 Art Manila, he was adjudged Artist of the Year. He began to show overseas – in New York’s Tyler Rollins in 2009, 2011 and 2014; with the leading Galerie Perrotin in Hong Kong (solo, Voids and Cages, 2013), in Milan (2010, 2012), in the Museo delle Culture in Lugano, Switzerland (2014), Taipei Fine Art Centre (2011), the Sydney Studio Residency in 2005, the Prague (2009) and Nanjing (China, 2010) biennales, besides the Taipei Print Biennale (1998).