Jim Woodring is an American comics artist of boundless imagination. Virtually unknown to the mainstream, he is, on the other hand, a revered legend of the alternative comics scene.
At the crossroads of American underground, surrealism, and psychedelia, he has created an extensive and distinctive body of work featuring the peculiar adventures of the anthropomorphic animal protagonist Frank. These mostly wordless comics are as humorous as they are grotesque. Frank, along with a dozen more or less eccentric characters, inhabits the seemingly chaotic fictional universe of Unifactor, which follows its own strange rules, requiring only that readers surrender to it without reservations.
The lecture will touch upon the design of comics characters, the sophistication and visual persuasiveness of Woodring’s comics world, and the inspirations behind it. Most importantly, we will discuss how the fact that these are silent, wordless comics shapes their meaning and influences the way readers construct meanings as they read. Katja Štesl, a comics critic and the author of the foreword to the Slovenian edition of a compilation of short comics about Frank, recently published by Stripburger, will guide us through Woodring’s universe.
Organization: Kino Šiška.
Free admission.
