I've added this statement(?) to the website as well, it is part of a submission of the the Angel to another art site.
On the website: http://gadzooxtian.com/angel.html
...too
arty for comic book lovers, too comic booky for art lovers
Do
you like comics? So do I. Marvel? Hell no! Okay we’re gonna be
friends then.
This
is not an “artist statement” - that will come some other time.
This is an introduction to The
Micturating Angel.
A spiel. A sales-pitch. But not an explanation – maybe an excuse? A
necessary use of words to explain images that have already said all
they can?
Do
you like comics? I mean REAL comics, like Charles Burns’ stuff, or
Druillet’s or Kago Shintaro or Nihei Tsutomu? Or The
Sandman
series by Neil Gaiman?
Right.
But
what about weird stuff by the original Surrealists and the Dadas? Are
you familiar with Max Ernst’s collage novels or Gilliam’s
animations from Monty
Python?
What about free jazz, avant garde music and the writings of William
Burroughs? The (good) films of David Lynch? Those books from the 90s
put out by V.Vale, the REsearch
books? You familiar with the æsthetics of early industrial music
culture or with the visuals of punk underground collages and
photocopy art?
Am
I laying this on too thick?
You
wanted a statement, an introduction, so a schooling you’re gonna
get, son.
Right.
We’ve established the basics, so meet The
Micturating Angel,
the Naked
Lunch
of comic books! I unashamedly call it a comic, ‘graphic novels’
are for pretentious twats. But its a comic with a fatal flaw: too
arty for comic book lovers, too comic booky for art lovers –
where do you draw the line?
Why
even draw it? (And why even draw a comic in the first place? Why not
collage it?)
I
grew up in Eastern Europe, pre-Fall-of-Communism, so my background is
a little different from yours. I read mostly French comics translated
into Magyar, I read nonsense literature from Germany and local
writers and science books (never became an astronaut though).
Emigration was a grand adventure and high school was a ridiculous
shock: all the beauty of learning coupled with everyone
hammering a round peg into a square whole.
Squares
man. They can be so beautiful when they’re not people.
Like
the panels of a comic book. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
In
high school I invented surrealist writing – not being aware of its
well-established existence. It saved my brain for greater things.
Eventually I met some actual surrealists, some actual poets and
artists and some actual interesting life.
And
here we are today – and I’d like you to meet my children – The
Micturating Angels
(there’s more than one).
Q:
What does “micturating” mean?
A:
Pissing.
Q:
Wut?
A:
It’s all you get.
A
surreal collage art-comic series seven years in the making (and
counting). Somewhere between 2ooo – 3ooo collages in total,
including the guest stars, the Secret
Chiefs (guys
in charge of this here Cosmos). Unravelling the adventures and sanity
levels of young girls against their captive, oppressive world (is
this a feminist comic? I don’t know…). Young girls against crappy
old men and institutions, religious zealots, ignorance vs. science,
freaks!
Drawing
on source materials ranging from hardware catalogues to religious
imagery to medical illustrations, alchemical instructions, furniture
assembly instructions, “dirty” comics, mangas,
giallos,
and cannibalistic self-re-absorbtions, the Necronomicon
(containing not all but most of the sigils of the “Fifty Sacred
Names of Marduk”), engineer’s manuals and mathematical formulæ
–
do
you still like comic books?
Then
you’ll love this one! Playing with the conventions of comics to
create striking visuals, adventures revealed through non-linear
story-telling and complete non-sense dialogue – yes, the words are
a red herring – The
Micturating Angel is
a unique comic that will never be understood by anyone – and that
makes it an enduring mystery, I hope. (Aren’t questions better
than answers? No they’re not. But Bigfoot is more interesting when
you DON’T know that it’s just mountain-lion footprints.)
And
there it is. My seven year Grand Opus, unlike its predecessors (all
the other books I’ve made), and a never to be repeated exercise by
me. And I WANT you to enjoy it! I really do, I want you to look
beyond the confusion, I want you to stop trying to make sense of it
and revel in what it actually IS: an ever-shifting series of
nightmares laid out like the storyboard of a Hollywood blockbuster
that will never be made.
Welcome
aboard. I hope you like THIS comic.
Xtian,
2019
“I
LOVE your collage work! It is VERY surreal… your comics are great!
… Good luck with your project!”
Rev.Ivan
Stang, Church of the Subgenius
“…
a
very original comic...”
Surrealismo
Internacional
