I was recently sent an advanced copy of Ray Sohn's upcoming PYRAMID LAKE, and the zine indelibly changed my impression of what a personal art zine/project can aspire to encompass. (I realize that sounds a little hyperbolic but it's true, especially after seeing so many flimsy "zines of xerox'd sketches" with work that didn't really persist past the time your eyeballs were scanning the page). I haven't met Ray personally yet, but am a longtime admirer of the gross-out/true-life comic strip True Chubbo, which he creates with his wife Tomomi.
Ray's latest project is Pyramid Lake, an upcoming exhibition of new works by the Brooklyn-based cartoonist that will be happening next month at Wonder Fair gallery in Lawrence, Kansas. Pyramid Lake is also the name of a book accompanying the exhibition, and will be available to purchase via his site next month as well.
Opening up my copy of Pyramid Lake gave me the rare pleasure of actually gasping out loud at the book's art, full up with a dazzling breadth of strange visual geometries!? I was pretty stunned by the compositions and variety of styles in this book. Pyramid Lake features a mixture of ink and collage, paneled pages showing the passage of time alongside cacophonic pages full to the brim with dense lines -- like brain coral reefs of imagery. The look of the book overall is by definition extremely bold, in that Ray made,
"...a conscious, almost spartan resolve to restrict myself by only using a dip pen, and black india ink on 12" x 12" pieces of paper. All of the free hand, and technical ink lines were laid down directly on paper with absolutely no planning, forethought, or preparatory under drawings."
I'm probably not good at describing the specific pieces in the book (
which include Ray's monolithic portrait of Lady Gaga from Prison for Bitches) but I can say that it was one of the most visually exciting books I've encountered in a while, the kind of short read where you pore over the details in each page rather than skim quickly. If you don't believe my tastes, Mr. Gary Panter wrote the introduction and discusses the accomplishments of Ray's project in the book's opening page :)
You can see some of what I'm talking about here:
(Click each image for a larger version)
DETAILS ON THE EXHIBITION:
Pyramid Lake:
An Exhibition and Book by Ray Sohn
April 29th - June 19th, 2011
(Final Friday) April 29th, 6-10pm
803 1/2 Massachusetts Street
In addition to Pyramid Lake, you can see a new color True Chubbo strip in the first issue of me and Michael DeForge's THICKNESS #1, an anthology of erotic comics debuting at TCAF 2011!
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