BILAL

ENKI BILAL BUG Book 3, Casterman 2022 Original illustration, second strip from original plate no. 16. Signed. Acrylic, oil pastel, graphite and India ink on paper 48 × 33 cm (18.9 × 12.99 in.) The evolution of Bilal's style is organized around two tangible mutations, between his early experiments with direct color (Fins de siècle, La Trilogie Nikopol...) and the period of La Tétralogie du monstre. From a storytelling point of view, he moves away from classic SF towards a forward-looking, almost prophetic, reflection on today's world, with the events in Yugoslavia in 1994 as a starting point; while in his aesthetic approach, there's an awareness - ever since he started making films - of the narrative but also artistic interest of vagueness. This lends his drawings a dreamlike dimension hitherto absent. In this magnificent panel from the third volume of Bug, we find the constants of his chromatic range: that unmistakable blue, that characteristic Veronese green, that garnet red and his hieratic, marmoreal poses.