6. Travel by Yuichi Yokoyama.
Picturebox, 2008.

(reads right to left, top to bottom)

Japanese painter and artist Yuichi Yokoyama uses techniques of traditional manga, or comic book art in Japan, but he is more concerned with the choreography of his unusual cast of performers and their interaction with the scene that he is forming around them. His unorthodox use of onomatopoeia provides a soundtrack that is akin to a field recording from a bizarre post-industrial world. In Travel Yokoyama depicts a swordfight in a library where books are being sheared apart by futuristic samurai. As the panels begin to fill with the sheared pages of the books, the dichotomy between what is actually happening in the comic and what is printed in the books becomes harder to distinguish.

"Modern Inkers," Case 5, Ryerson & Burnham Libraries, July 17-September 24, 2012