Bienvenido "Bones" Banez Jr. - Rising Fame?

Bienvenido "Bones" Banez Jr.
Kulay-Diwa Gallery of Philippine Contemporary Art

An email from my friend Terrance Lindall informs me that "New sites have picked up Bien." He refers to 'psychedelic' surrealist artist Bienvenido "Bones" Banez Jr. and his artwork. One site that has picked Bien up is the Kulay-Diwa Gallery of Philippine Contemporary Art, which has this to say about itself:

Kulay-Diwa Gallery of Philippine Contemporary Art is a privately owned venue for artistic expression. It is strategically located within a cluster of progressive communities South of Manila. It has an independent exhibition area able to accommodate large-scale works, and a spacious garden ideal for outdoor programs, performances and sculpture installations.

Goals of Kulay-Diwa:

To discover and promote the works of talented, young and deserving Filipino Artist[s]; To serve as a cultural outpost and make the arts more accessible to the fast-growing communities South of Manila; and To foster cultural interaction and exchanges with the local regions, Southeast Asia and other countries.

Kulay (Color)

Diwa (Spirit, Thought)

Phillip Somozo, writing for the website of the Kulay-Diwa Gallery of Philippine Contemporary Art, says: "At a time when Manila is rocked by controversies surrounding the questionable declaration of some personalities as National Artists, a Davao-born art talent quietly carved a niche among history's greatest surrealists," adding that "his name, profile, and sample work recently are published in a German edition of The International Encyclopedia of Fantastic, Surrealist, Symbolist, and Visionary Artists." Here's a sample of what this gallery offers as characteristic of Bien's work:

This artwork is a photo of Bien's famous statue of Satan, but modified by mixed media colors on the photograph. Of these colors, Gerhard Habarta, writing for the The International Encyclopedia of Fantastic, Surrealist, Symbolist, and Visionary Artists, has this to say:

What makes Banez a paradox among surrealists is his depiction of hellish conditions not as murky depths, but psychedelic sceneries where spectra of colors enthrall viewers. Figures -- human, geometric or biomorphic curiosities -- lose tactility and become translucent images and luminosities swirling, shimmering, or disintegrating in a world bereft of gravity . . . . Esthetically mesmerizing [as] the colors are in a Banez canvas, the portrayed perversion and misery of humankind are as morbid and offensive to good taste. Apparently, the artist captures the viewer with chromatic wonder; then, in succeeding moments, pounces on his cognitive faculties with horrors of the wages of sin.

Bien, I gather, is a very religious artist, and his "666 Art World" seemingly depicts the trials of the Christian "Tribulation" as set forth, rather murkily, in the Book of the Apocalypse, but Bien's vision shines through that murk with an aesthetically captivating chromatic miracle of a seeming paradox between artistic color and morbidly 'tasteless' imagery -- to put the matter in Habarta's terms!

Another art site, the Visionary Art Gallery, offers this colorful painting:

Our World 666 Extinction

The site also shows one of Bien's paintings on display in the Phantasten Museum, Vienna, Austria, but I'm not able to copy the image for my Gypsy Scholar site.

Yet another website, Our Own Voice, offers several images (also uncopyable, unfortunately) and says this:

Bañez's art revolves around the reign of evil in the world, which he likes to refer to as 666. To Bañez, the perpetrators of wars, poverty, injustice, environmental degradation, cultural decadence, and terrorism -- are already the incarnates of 666; no need to look further, or make paranormal theories and computat[i]ons. Evil is here, doom is close by. And Bañez expresses all these in a kaleidoscope of psychedelic human and sub-human figures.

As I noted, a very religious artist, in his motivation and also in his manner of expression, so take a look, a very long look, into this colorful abyss, and consider Bien's words, namely, that "Satan brings color to the world" . . .