ÉDITIONS MATIÈRE

Nothing exists without the reader [+]

K. J.― How would you describe, define, or categorize the comics you make? Abstract comics? A. B.― I would like to say minimalism. Most of the time I try to refine as much as possible, to deal with the simplest parameters, with the pure mechanics of the comics form and to conduct experiments. But I keep a certain classic comics codes: there are panels, and the reading is linear (even if I like to play with the entire page). I feel what I’m doing is more like an archeological search for the very roots of this sequential language. I like when things are between the abstract and the figurative and when figures come to surface to play with this in-between. Humans are designed (and/or acculturated?) to see signs, to try to decrypt reality so with just a little bit of information they can link things and understand some logic. I’m fascinated by this process and love to question it. K. J.― What inspired you to develop a “minimalist” style? Did you know previous so-called “abstract comics” when you started yours? A. B.― No, I didn’t know the few experiments that had been done at the time, when I started my first minimalist project (Globe, 2008). I was thinking, “It’s unbelievable that nobody has ever done it yet! Why did the comics form wait so long to liberate itself from literature or illustration”. I dived into it intuitively. My first and biggest inspirations are maybe (adventures) comics in general that I had read, like Spirou or Tintin. For me, it’s about movement. Each comic book is a rush forward; the reader is led by the character walking, running, jumping, falling (ok they are also talking) within landscapes. And this movement doesn’t exist on its own like in the cinema. The movement is created by reading. And reading is a movement. So I try to find what kind of energy drives comics beneath all the artifices (characters, stories, and anecdotes). Distill the comic to the maximum to reach its essence: movement. What I love is composing images with shapes and lines so that the reader can decrypt these signs and imagine or feel the movement. Nothing exists without the reader; s/he is active; s/he projects her or his own experience into the life of movement; s/he applies physical laws to fixed images printed on paper. I’m enchanted by this mental exercise. To associate images, to combine signs, to question them and drive drawings toward abstraction as if they were an imaginary language. [lire la suite sur le blog de Kim Jooha.] [-]