Paweł Althamer

Pawel-Althamer

I just love the instantly performative space a sculpture of the human body presents. It’s like an instant empathy machine. If not a mind connection, at the very least a body connection is formed. You can’t help but try to mimic the pose and state of the form you are presented with.

Althamer here subverts that instinct a little and I love it. You’re presented with a void where a body should be, a skeletal / zombie / mummy like experience mixed with the invisible man. Just enough to give a hint of the human form that should add corporality but is strangely absent yet wholly defined. That, paired with the extremely lifelike casts of the most expressive part of the human body just creates something perfectly disturbing and uncanny.

Pawel-Althamer-2

Pawel-Althamer-3

And yet this series is just one of a diverse, varied and long art practice that is Paweł Althamer.

Yo Miss – Lisa Wilde

yomiss_wilde

Yet another graphic novel, but I love them. Usually if the drawing style doesn’t jive with me I have to put the graphic novel down, I just can’t deal with it, it’s a very important part of a graphic novel for me.

Things were different here, I was in danger of putting Yo Miss down, but the story just won me over. I couldn’t put it down. Fairly standard fare about a school full of kids, a second chance school for inner city kids, but the story is so full of heart and you grow to like the teacher (Lisa Wilde / Author) and the kids are so endearing (reflects I’m sure, the teachers love for her students) that you just keep turning the pages.