Head like a hole

MANILA, Philippines - Artist Olan Ventura is talking to a one-eyed flower vendor who is furiously drawing and drawing. We are in a city with its strobe lights of quick thrills, cheap beer and lost souls. Music pounds telegraphically. No, this is not a Roald Dahl parable — this stuff’s for real and it’s outta get ya.

The kid has drawn something straight from Dragonball Z, and Olan is visibly impressed. He whips out his camera and takes a picture of the boy. Searching for a friend with my good eye closed… Months from now, this boy whose name I can’t recall at the moment will be an Olan Ventura painting — negative flesh tones, color bars and all. A headshot hanging in a wall somewhere.

This is Olan’s strategy for his latest show at West Gallery: to immortalize in a dual portrait the intriguing Mister or Miss Everyone he encounters on the street. In his “Face the Strange” exhibition at Taksu Singapore early this year, the artist created grand depictions (positive imagery side by side with negative imagery) of icons such as Madonna and Lady Gaga alongside Salvador Dali and Jackson Pollock.

Olan’s latest subjects are archetypal yet not in the Jungian scheme of things. You see them every day and know absolute shit about them.

Meet the pimp (“Messenger of Gods”) bathed in eerie purple, pink and pockmarks. Meet the vagabond kid (“Mohawk”), punkish and defiant against all odds and then some. Meet the poster-woman of Ifugaos (“Almost Famous”) with her leathery face and patented put-on smile. Meet the sweet-painted lady of men’s desires (“Night Crawler”), sucking on something — a fat, bent cigarette. Meet the smartly-dressed tambay (“Sentinel”), a street fixture full of ancient wisdom and sordid experiences. Meet the impersonator (“Siren”), who is half-man/half-Madonna. Meet the pseudo-superhero (“Stand-by Comedian”), who saves the world by making people laugh.

Meet the one-eyed boy who hands Olan an anime drawing. The night is still young and we are hungering for more beer, less music and a few more tales of the weird.

Meet Olan Ventura the artist. Who might just want to save you from your own abyss of anonymity.

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Olan Ventura’s” League of Extraordinary Nobodies” opens tomorrow, 6 p.m., at West Gallery, 48 West Ave., 1104 Quezon City. For information, call 411-0336.

The show is on view until Dec. 8.