Victor Fota, an oil painter who enhances his art with animation and digital retouching, creates a dystopian world in which the subjects are in pain or are rendered inert by laziness. In Conflicting Metaphysics, it is a self portrait of pain and suffering and “depicts the torment of one’s indecision when confronted with arguments from science or religion.” The subject is center stage in the piece, his face is distorted in misery, brow wrinkled, brows furrowed, mouth open wide in a silent scream silenced by an apple stuffed into his mouth, shirt rumpled, some sort of unlit torch in his hand. His eyes look outward in pain as if appealing for help. He stands in an ordinary apartment with an industrial city in the background. There is a kind of bleakness around him illustrated with the simple lines and drab color palette. His shirt and cherry red cap is the only spot of brightness in the image. Out of his head emerges seven circles, each filled with an oppressive demon that haunts and plagues him: There are men shouting at him from either side, a sacrificial lamb, the holy dove, the all-seeing eye, ever-moving hands of time. Religious symbols and scientific images are connected to his head with blood red arterial thread.