Tuesday, July 7, 2009

Balloons, Part 1

(From Tom Phillips' A Humument.) Phillips painted over each page of a random book he bought at a used bookstore called A Human Document. Look at the bulk of it here. This page, page 20, turned out all comic book like. These word balloon flagellates are the only untouched windows back into the original text. They are created by isolation, truncation, and concealment. Gabrielle Bell employs a similarly snaky word balloon:
(From CAJINY. Click to enlarge.) Felix's dialogue is uniquely curved, uniquely isolated. "No" says something but offers nothing; "castles... / spaceships / suits of armor / ..." is hodgepodge, filled with gaps. He gives hesitant replies, half replies, and the tiny windows into his artistic life are afterthoughts, bottom right corner, not quite fit for a gallery. The adult introductions for the most part conceal true transparency.
---
Brief detour to Ex Machina next, but then back to Gabrielle Bell for a final hurrah.

No comments:

Post a Comment