I love this Petit Livres series from Drawn and Quarterly. Here’s the newest- paintings, drawings and sculptures from Vancouver based artist Chris Von Szombathy. His work is pretty insane. I can’t think of any way to describe it except that it’s as if we are seeing cartoon’s dreams. All of these cartoonish characters are in crazy scenarios- bears wearing ornate pattern hats holding swords share the page with a man dripping orange paint from his hands while smoking a cigarette from a cigarette holder. The smoke turns into shrieking black kitty cats. There are also some floating ice cream sandwiches. I mean can’t you just see a cartoon bear saying “you guys, listen to this weird dream I had…” and then describing that. Chris also has these awesome sculptures scattered throughout the book that could be my favorite part- especially the ones where he’s painted faces on shoe stretchers and added in real human teeth to their mouths. I wonder what Chris is like in person. You can buy a copy of this book here.

© Julia Rothman 2007