Nowhere is this display of fine excess more mind-boggling than in a suite devoted largely to the contrasting image of tranquility and terror, as in “A Freedom Holiday Against the Killjoys of the World,” which is a visual rumination on the spate of bombings that took place in tourist-friendly Bali, Indonesia recently. Here, the splintered road signs gone suddenly awry amid a four-panel canvas shatter a giant orb symbolizing Bali’s effervescent tropical beauty.

Equally disdainful of this generation’s preoccupation with lip-service communication is the painting titled “Lips Express,” a wit-laden montage that shows what, in the morass of layered and superimposed forms, looks like a peephole that allows the viewer a peek into the hidden agenda beneath the mouthful superficial exchange, with a blown-up exclamation mark delivering the ultimate visual punchline.

The changing seasons also get a jabbing of sorts from Veneracion’s wildly acidulous brushwork in the “Red Zone,” a diptych that shows the changing landscape, which has by now fallen prey to the lethal charms of the El Nino. In “Summertime 3,” however, Veneracion seems to look more kindly at the natural course summer has taken, throwing in pigments of sand which have, in the process, been wittily incorporated in the canvas.

A staunch yoga disciple who goes into Zen meditation as a way of quelling his wildly restive mind, Veneracion has painted the equivalent of his wanderings while the mind is deep in thought. In “Zazen at Noon,” time and space are encapsulated in the textured surface in almost minimalist form. A small window is represented symbolizing the mind just about to open up gently, the artist’s thoughts ferried across time and space by a dash of cloud here and a portentous calligraphic smoke there.

 

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