Ante Bellum

Ante Bellum is a continuation of a thematic series that the artist started some three years ago, The collection is conceived as part chronicle of his last realm created and entitled Manifesto Destino Vastardos. Having worked as an animator for Japanese mangga films in the last ten years, Balanon’s influence is a distorted combination of comic-books, punk/metal illustrations, graffiti  and Filipino art culture, often extracted and splashed onto large scale murals of distorted and convoluted non beings. The title, Ante Bellum (Before The War) suggests on the one hand the problematic issues and tension before conflict; and on the other an envisioned trajectory to a destiny as laid down by the present conditions of the weak and afflicted.

Ante Bellum is a dark invocation; a fictional, mythical, cybersquatting the dead concept; a present-day paleothic painting that is plastered on the psyche of Victor Balanon’s illusory and fascinating world of heros, cripples and demons, opening a domain of the parodically strange and fantastical.  Even more fascinating is that as the audience, we all fear yet persist to be lured, inexplicably escaping to the surreal and disorienting complexities of such worlds conjured by such talented creators….

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