Room 2 screams Pop with a twist.
Ventura is making the case that emoticons or emojis are usurping the role of words as signifiers. No longer treated as code or cyphers, these symbols are currently ensconced in modern human discourse: popular, ubiquitous, universal. Even if they come in basic shapes and simple symbols… they are easily understood, the artist points out. We get it right away. Our cave drawings have turned into plump yellow heads.
He also sees reality as a swift slideshow of visuals. There is no smoothening of transitory images, the country of the “in-between.” The artist said it is like perusing a magazine or watching fast-cut edited videos. There is bound to be some overlapping, with raw images bleeding into one other. These observations have prompted Ventura to create works with sharpened—not blurred—boundaries.
In this room, Japanese pop figures transition into something else (“Humanime”) as collectibles ascend into artfulness and art itself becomes fun yet oracular at the same time.