Yishai Jusidman

“The Nilcese world, as illustrated in subsequent installations, is rich in symbolically suggestive scatological perversions: joyfully bruised cherubic boys, braid-shaped medicinal excrement cookies, grammatological pregnancies. Some might say these artfully contrived extravagances call for psychoanalytic interpretation. Others see in Ventura's work a Foucauldian take on the partnership of language with ever-tyrannical power structures. In any case, and however consistent its notation system might seem from the outside, Nilcese follows rules capriciously determined by Ventura, a code as whimsical as its social consequences are bizarre. Ventura's messianic rhetorical flights may echo those of Hitler, Mao, or L. Ron Hubbard, but without addressing their demagogic consequences. Rather, his facetious fabrications should be seen as belonging to the tradition of Henry Darger's Realms of the Unreal. Granted, Darger was a crazy janitor, whereas Ventura is a professional artist. Still, as also happens in artworks by cer tified psychotics, Ventura's diligent artistic maneuvers and their outlandish logic manage to reinforce one another, charging the work with emotional tensions that our own sanity forbids us to fully unravel. "Acting crazy" does not amount to "being crazy" when it comes to people, even artists; but when it comes to artworks, it somehow sometimes does.”

ArtForum,  Sept, 2002  by Yishai Jusidman, “MUSEO DE ARTE CARRILLO GIL”, COPYRIGHT 2002 Artforum International Magazine, Inc., COPYRIGHT 2002 Gale Group en http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0268/is_1_41/ai_91202169