The story goes

An observer may speculate that Ventura's figures are hypermediated, or assume a hyperrreal effect. This impression is risky, given the veneer of ther work as oil, but also interesting not because it discloses a trick in the trade or that it unveils the artifice, but because it complicates our notions of how bodies are supposed to be harnessed as figuration.

(Patrick Flores cited in Thingy in Mapping the Corporeal: Ronald Ventura, exhibition catalogue, NUS Museum, 2008, unpaginated)