Pollination Ecology: Paintings and Ceramics by Rob Ventura

Platform Project Space presents Pollination Ecology, an exhibition by New Jersey based artist Rob Ventura. In his second showing with the gallery, Ventura continues his mixed-media explorations of organic life and biological forms.

Pollination ecology is the study of pollen transfer through interactions between plants and pollinators in relation to their habitat. In Pollination Ecology, Ventura incorporates fantastical representations of flowers, honeycombs, beetles, fungi, and cells. Combining interrelated, yet, distinct bodies of work, a full ecosystem of plants and pollinators emerges in the gallery space. The artist envisages his theatrical role in the exhibition as a natural historian, like Charles Darwin who postulated a theory of plant and insect coevolution in The Origin of Species.

The exhibition consists of paintings and ceramics largely created during the COVID-19 pandemic. The flowering theme of the show suggests rebirth, renewal, fecundity, Eros, as well as fragility. Ventura had previously exhibited in the group exhibition Men Who Paint Flowers at Platform Project Space, curated by Patrick Neal and Elizabeth Hazan.

Rob Ventura (b. 1989) is an emerging mixed-media artist whose practice is concerned with contemporary approaches to painterly abstraction. Ventura received his Masters of Fine Art from Boston University in 2013 where he was the Constantin Alajalov Scholarship Recipient. His work has since been exhibited in New York City at PROTO Gomez, MEN Gallery, Platform Project Space, Freight and Volume, Underdonk, and Marquee Projects, among others. He has received reviews from Two Coats of Paint, Cultbytes, Friend of the Artist, Exquisite Pandemic, and A Hundred and Eleven Magazine. Ventura lives in Jersey City, NJ and works in Hoboken, NJ.