UNITED STATES OF ALLEGORY

The artist's work deals mostly about Weird Filipiniana. But for this particular piece, he decided to tackle America. The painting is his sort-of twisted love letter to the great U.S. of A. Lady Liberty is the main subject, but all around her are various American pop cultural and historical references: Warhol’s Velvet Underground banana, King Kong, jazz saxophonist Sonny Rollins, the blue Illuminati horse at the Denver airport, a scene from a typical cabin-in-the-woods type of horror movie, a Klansman, scenes of alien abduction, etc. The work is his take on how disjointed the entire world (supervised by America and powered by American interests) has become: the loss of moorings, how the center cannot hold, and things inevitably fall apart. There is a circus-carney atmosphere in the painting, but darkness is swelling.

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Photos courtesy of Pinto Art Museum