Brush, Pen, India Ink, Masking Medium on canvas
Mind Set Art Center is delighted to present Victor Balanon’s second solo exhibition in Taiwan, “For Tomorrow You will not Recognize Us”, from 25th of February to 1st of April 2017. Balanon will take a brief residency in Taipei and hold a presentation at Mind Set Art Center. Further details for the presentation will be announced when time is closer.
As a tribute to the avant-garde movement started in the 1910’s, Balanon named his latest solo exhibition “For Tomorrow You will not Recognize Us” after Kazimir Malevich’s ending sentence of his famous Manifesto of Suprematism, From Cubism and Futurism to Suprematism: The New Realism in Painting (originally announced in the 1915 exhibition “0.10 The Last Futurist Exhibition” with the title From Cubism to Suprematism, and later expanded and published in 1916). Presented is a series of portraits of the avant-garde artists in Balanon’s signature ink painting. The portraits, however, are interfered with lines and geometric forms implying each object’s artistic style, as if in a process of changing or disappearing. The works are titled with the first name of the objects without their last names, corresponding to Balanon’s intention to make them “anonymous”. The exhibition thus reveals Balanon’s reflection on the art history as well as his own artistic practice of synthesizing the figurative/ narrative forms of his previous works with that of pure geometric abstraction.
Currently based in Quezon City, Philippines, Victor Balanon (1972-) mainly works with ink drawings and animate films. He was originally trained in dental medicine but left school to pursue his interest in art. He later studied film and animation at the Mowelfund Film Institute in Manila. He has participated and supported various local artist-run initiatives in the 90’s, particularly with the collective “Surrounded by Water”. Since then, he had been invited in various group shows both locally and abroad. He had his first solo exhibition in 2011 and had more than 10 exhibitions to date. His works has been featured at the Jakarta Biennale, the Jewish Museum, the Museum of Contemporary Art and Design, the University of the Philippines’ Vargas Museum and the Singapore Art Museum.