Arts

Madison Smartt Bell

Zine Scene: The Color of Night

Madison Smartt Bell: The Color of NightMadison Smartt Bell: The Color of Night (Vintage, 4/15/11)

The term “revelry” has fallen out into disuse. When you hear it, you think of the Marquis de Sade or Dorian Gray, of a debauched immersion of oneself in the darker yet still pleasurable parts of life, but rarely of something immediate to your own life.

In Madison Smartt Bell’s new novel, The Color of Night, we are made to feel just how current the word still is. When we consider the American public’s obsession with fear, violence, anarchy, and the excessive attention that the news media gives to all of these topics, it’s unsurprising that Bell’s story of revelry rings as true and cuts as deep as it does.

The Color of Night tells the story of Mae, a blackjack dealer in Nevada who develops a strong and immediate obsession with the events of 9/11. She tapes the images of the chaos and blood from news programs (already repeated ad nauseum by the media itself) and, between working at a dead-end job and wandering the desert at night, revels in the endless replaying of so much suffering — for, as Mae tells us, it’s only natural to try and pass your own suffering onto someone else.

Ripo

Ripo: Reclaiming the Streets with Art

Expanding on traditional graffiti tropes, Barcelona-based multimedia artist Ripo draws heavily on elements of calligraphy and antique signage to reclaim public space and confront the public with its surroundings.

Adam Cruickshank: Worldwide Visual Sabotage

There are few mediums that Australian artist Adam Cruickshank hasn’t explored. From designing for Nike to bombing street locations with wheatpastes, he’s driven by ideas, not aesthetics.

Night Animals

Zine Scene: Night Animals

Night AnimalsBrecht Evens: Night Animals (Top Shelf, March 2011, $7.95)

Equal parts Edward Gorey and Where the Wild Things Are — surreal and yet completely honest — the newest work by Belgian graphic novelist Brecht Evens makes one hell of an impression without saying anything at all.

Night Animals, described on its title page as “a diptych about what rushes through the bushes,” charms with two very different wordless stories. In the first, a man waits to meet a blind date and is compelled to search for her through the sewers and underground, encountering a vast array of monsters that live there on his way. The second follows a young girl as she undergoes puberty (all in one day) and is later kidnapped by similar monsters for a wild party in the woods that soon turns sinister.

The first story, “Blind Date,” playfully recasts the uncertainty of waiting for an unknown woman into an epic quest involving sewer diving, spelunking, and fending off various beasts. Ultimately light and funny, it contrasts sharply with the second story’s comparative darkness. In “Bad Friends,” a young girl gets her first period during the school day, and while feeling ashamed later at home, is carried off by monsters. A bacchanal ensues in the forest, celebrating her new-found womanhood, but the monsters’ dark intentions leave the reader with a final sense of dread.

It seems fitting to use the word “phantasmagoric” for Evens’ sprawling, intricate visuals, considering his debt to the many artists that the label has also been applied to, and his obvious debt to most of them. His pen drawings obviously recall Gorey, as mentioned, or Tim Burton’s doodles, and even some more creative children’s books (although a celebration of a young woman’s first period would likely not be found in most of those).

Night Animals

KRETS Gallery

Gallery Spotlight: KRETS Gallery

In 2007, Anna Granqvist and Cindy Lee, along with fellow friends Ellinor Bjelm and Henrik Kihlberg, created KRETS Gallery, one of Malmö, Sweden’s first progressive contemporary art spaces. KRETS (a word that has multiple meanings in Swedish) can refer to a shared interest in something, and, in this case, encapsulates the founders’ love of presenting thought-provoking art that wouldn’t be available elsewhere.

“It was our shared interest in, and passion for, art and music that led us to opening a space where we could show and spread what otherwise have been invisible around here to a wider audience,” Granqvist says.

Granqvist and Lee, who are now KRETS’ sole owners, are both originally from Orebro, a smaller town in northern Sweden. Though they attended the same high school, they didn’t actually meet and become friends until they bonded over a shared interest in contemporary art at the Full Pull music festival in Malmö.

KRETS Gallery

Faesthetic

Zine Scene: Faesthetic

Faesthetic is changing the way zines are marketed and redefining that for which they stand. Much more than a high-quality art showcase, Faesthetic has grown into a taste-maker for the 21st Century art scene.

This glossy, invitation-only art zine began as a magazine showcase for established talent and up-and-coming artists, but it has since expanded into the areas of gallery shows, T-shirt design, and poster art, and it has even lent its name and style to a New York Fashion Week event. Exclusive, high-brow, and part of a growing media empire characterized by artistic partnerships — is this the future of zine culture?
 

Faesthetic
Faesthetic #13

Created in 2001 by Dustin A. Hostetler, Faesthetic has only produced 12 issues so far, but its involvement in cultural events and its highly active blog lend it influence beyond a few dozen pages of actual printed product. Hostetler intends to continue producing one issue per year and to add an Internet-based supplement in the near future. However, the focus of Faesthetic remains squarely on its glossy, high-quality print issues.

Originally, Hostetler’s idea was to create a tangible product in response to the boom in PDF zines during the past few years. The fact that Faesthetic is a polished, collectible art book is obviously important to his aesthetic. “I wanted something I could tuck away in a box, put it in my attic, and that my grandchildren could find some day,” he explains.

Disjecta

Gallery Spotlight: Disjecta

There is typically a sense of finality when an artist’s work is displayed on a gallery’s walls. It’s all about showcasing the finished product, and as a result, the viewer is usually unaware of the creative process that went into each piece. Gallery owner Byran Suereth would rather put the focus on an artist’s disjecta — the fragments and revisions that eventually form a final piece. So when Suereth formed his gallery in 2000, he thought Disjecta would be a fitting namesake. “Disjecta was an interesting name, and it also had a connotation for what we do as an arts institution,” Suereth says.

Disjecta

As Suereth started Disjecta, Portland’s burgeoning art scene consisted primarily of artists and collectives that operated informally out of warehouses. It was his peers’ DIY approach and the city’s creative energy that sparked his idea to create a gallery of his own. “For the first two years of Disjecta, we really fed off of that spirit,” Suereth says. “I wanted the ability to create and to give people in the space the ability to create.”

Lynd Ward

Zine Scene: Lynd Ward

Before Daniel Clowes and Adrian Tomine, before Frank Miller and Alan Moore, and even before Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, there was Lynd Ward — America’s first, real graphic novelist. The terms “visionary” or “pioneer” could be applied to Ward, but the truth is that he was making graphic novels way before it was cool, and probably before it was even thought possible to create such a thing. Between 1929 and 1937, he dared to tell dramatic adult stories with just a series of woodcut images and his own vision.

Born in 1905 in Chicago, Ward lived through some of the most tumultuous moments of the 20th Century, most of which found a way into his dynamic, wordless picture books, now widely regarded as the origins of the modern graphic novel. His stories included sociopolitical commentary on the inter-war atmosphere of dread — the sinking American economy, the meteoric rise of European fascism, and the effect of swift industrialization on the self-hood of the worker — as well as more thoughtful matters, such as the whether or not the soul could survive in the modern age, or the price of artistic ambition and greed.

Lynd Ward