Probosci Poster

Dear Ducks,
For my first post here, let me offer you a very cute goat.
As you noticed, it's a poster for Probosci and L'Oeillère.
Wormly.

arnus

HALLOWEEN ISLAND - HALLOWEEN DECORATIONS BY SEAN AABERG

I went crazy doing Halloween Decorations!!! We have three sets. No I'm working on Thanksgiving/Fall & Christmas ones. So much fun! Get them at the GOBLINKO MEGAMALL.

Music!

Hello Ducks

I did some work for music release recently

One is Assatur second demo, oldschool death metal, here's one track from it (this is the bonus track)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5cqpwY-axQ

bands page http://www.twistedface.org/assatur/

The other is for industrial/gabber electronic from norway, END

https://epicureanescapism.bandcamp.com/album/subhuman-tracks

that's all folks!

cheers

Wine and dine in Veneto

Normally, drawing comics and the like does not put much food into my mouth, but late September it certainly did. As a long-time partner to the Treviso Comic Book Festival,  Gruppo Ristoratori della Marca Trevigiana invited me to to join the Dripping Taste tour in the Veneto area, together with my old pals Ole Comoll Christensen (DK) and Jakob Klemencic (SLO). We were joined by Cynthia Neves (BRA) a day later. So, next to touring around Treviso and visiting local industries, there were also mega-lunches to enjoy. That does make one feel somewhat like a barbarian, coming from one of those mashed-potato countries up north.

This is us sketching, joined by Stefano Piccoli from Dripping Taste in the Canova Museum - dedicated to neoclassical sculptor Antonio Canova.

A giant sandal outside the Canova Museum.

A cruel sketch from a Canova painting. The neoclassical beauty standards of the time were frigging weird.

My first sketch on tour, after a visit to the Bosa ceramics factory. It features a few designs of theirs (the leegant shapes were often reminiscent of Lorenzo Matotti's comics) and Typex, my roommate at the hotel in Treviso. He likes to draw caricatures of his comics collegues and had to borrow a crummy mountain bike to get around in Treviso.

And sometimes, it is lunchtime. This was done at Villa Razzolini Loredan, where i learnt that 'to have lunch with the pope' is a local expression for having very good food. (Yes, I know i am lagging behind a few popes in this drawing. A pope is a pope, right?)

A sketch of the fully automatic milking contraption at the Vaka Mora dairy farm. The cows do all the work themselves.

Malanotte. Weird name for a Raboso wine. I'm not making it up.

Lunch again, at Ristorante Le Beccherie. Starter called 'butterfly'. Physiognomy kicked in just then.

Although many, if not all, parts of the tour were great, my personal highlight was a visit to sculptor Romano Abate, who does wildly grotesque works, inspired by classic mythology. My sketch here was done after a hommage to Dante Alighieri, made from the trunk of a 2,000 year old olive tree. It felt like home to be there.

Besonders Wertlos

I recently designed this wrap-around cover and some interior vignettes for the book: "Besonders Wertlos", a collection of film reviews and other articles by Jörg Buttgereit.
The vignettes accompany the respective articles' titles and represent their subjects, and the idea was to have all the vignettes appear somewhere on the cover.
I made about 50 vignettes in total. Some are fairly hidden on the cover or only represented indirectly, but it should be easy to spot the nine below.

Diamond Life

 Though little known, if not wholly obscured by more flattering fashions and styles in contemporary art, the paintings, comics, sculptures, poems, jewelry, films, musics, and performances of J.A. Bernard Meijer (a.k.a. Bernd, Bnine, Bmen, Ben) of Den Haag together constitute a body of work which, in its complexities, the craft exemplified by it, and through the raw energy it projects, compacts 21st century life like few of his contemporaries' oeuvres can.

If encountered through the singular aspect of one medium only (the way time and circumstance unfortunately force me to let you experience it, with this brief introduction), his poetry might seem like the ramblings of a dyslexic, his paintings those of a typical outsider artist, his street-art a mere party-trick; only when held up to the light for examination of its sum totality does it reflect mercilessly the unified thrust of its maker's intentions. Versatile and erratic, Meijer traces a private mythology across myriads of media, combining the stately grace of Byzantine ikons with the gutter dynamics of pop culture, and a dash of Dada.

Many of his comics start with, or otherwise incorporate the phrase (in his own ideosyncratic orthography): IT WAS T'AGE OF MACHINERY. Inspired perhaps by Meijer's time in India, this is a reference to the Kali Yuga, or Age of Discord,the last stage of human history as predicted in orthodox Hinduism.

Across scrawled graffitti and junkyard altarpieces and photocopied zines, Meijer draws us a map of the Apocalyptic desert of this terrifying age; a nightmare landscape where pop culture detritus fights itself in an endless loop. Across this desert, an eternal West (the Western Lands, Egyptian land of the dead, land where the sun of civilization goes down?) , riddled with vampire robot cowboys and cybernetic crustaceans, ride the Kings of the West. Are they the good guys, the bad? Prophets or Anti-Christs? None of it resolves.The magician's-apprentice figure of Stick Boy, a youthful ninja-moses forever confronts the G.O.D. (Genmatic Ord'ring Device), is forever trained by the wizened old wizard in the cave. This is the Apocalypse as Coda. It is an eternally sinking ship with the band playing on, and on, and on.

All this reflects perhaps a lifelong struggle with the Black Dog of depression which ended when Ben decided to end his life in 2013. He had always proclaimed that if it hadn't been for the hopeful message of X-men comics he read as a kid ( i'm a weird kid/i'm a mutant-that's okay!), he would have long since given up, but in the end, that energy and hope could not be sustained into an adulthood which had begun far too early (by his own admission- accounts of playground knife-fights abound).

Where are the heroes when you need them?

Ben's end shows up the Myth of the Campbellian Myth, umasks the Hero with a Thousand Faces and its positivist anthropocentric view that we must learn to recognize these mythical threads in everyday interactions, organise our inner life in accordance with narrative structures, and work through these stories to emerge healed and whole, a fuller human being. That, too, is just a story, and stories won't save us. No matter how many we tell or consume.

Even if i was too late in comprehending this truth to save my friend and mentor and colleague from his essential loneliness, i hope his life and work persist in being reminders of this mineral truth upon which others may yet sharpen their swords.

Loneliness is fundamental, but that fact is the rock we should build our humanity upon, and not upon stories.

Note on the illustrations: this is only a fragment of a vast body of work, the actual physical manifestations of which are scattered widely, not only across media, but amongst diverse archives and owners. His graphic output is in need of proper scanning, the paintings, once located, are deserving of more than quick Iphone photographs.

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Exit Thru The Gift Shop:

It is in honour & remembrance of our brother that fellow cartoonist Mattijs van Katwijk & i have put together a zine featuring some collaborative drawings & comics. Comes with a facsimile of one of Ben's pamphlets. Interested parties may email to: ibr.ineke (at) gmail(dot) com

Hieronymus Bosch the unauthorized biography

It came from the printers the other day. In English, Dutch and Danish for now. German and other languages are to follow. Over four years in the making. Now the promotional gauntlet awaits... 

HALLOWEEN IS EVERY DAY!!!

Hello Ducks. Long time - no see... I've been going Halloween crazy - first re-committed PORK magazine to establishing a permanent Halloween populated by monsters. I'm quite stoked with this cover. It's an ultimate dungeon party with a hallucinogenic witch's brew. We also got KAZ on board doing comix now which is fucking radical.

Meanwhile I've been launching tons of new Halloween products like this Halloween Haunted House poster. I thought about the crazy feeling I'd get Trick or Treating as a little kid, how disoriented I'd get going door to door, especially if the house was decked out. There were a couple Haunted Houses that were really nightmarish as a kid. One of them had a Vampire in a coffin that would come out & chase Trick or Treaters that got too close. I was also thinking about the first Punk House parties I went to & how I'd get a similar, disoriented, freaked out, but very pleased feeling at them.

Finally, I designed these Halloween Cut-Out Decorations. All this stuff is coming out under the Halloween Island brand from the GOBLINKO MEGAMALL. These are inspired by the old Beistle Halloween Vintage Paper Decorations, but obviously in my WEIRDO ART style.

I'm doing very well, I'm working too hard, but it has payed off. We've got seven paid employees at GOBLINKO now & it's all housed in its own house even! Me & Katie are the lowest paid employees as the owners, but it's cool cos we're doing exactly what we want to do & it's really been taking off.

You can get them all at the GOBLINKO MEGAMALL. 

BILDERBERG featuring Ray Murphy & Molluskhead

Here's my contribution to the Bilderberg Zine. It's a cover version of a page from Swamp Thing.

recent stuff

hello

some asked what's our volontary influence... that's strange to say but i'm actually trying to be influenced by myself ^^ well, i checked my drawings from oldtimes, since 1987, trying to catch what is "my own style" without big success! I can see 3 general group, some cartoonish/punkish morbid stuff, some dark morbid surrealism, and some morbid design... so the only common point here is morbidity! Then I feel like never been able to choose one single way of doing/express it! Oh and yes sometimes i like doing fake medieval or any fake stuff!

well, no matter! here's some new drawings recently done...

Pride devours the Lion/Lion devours the Proud

How long can i keep up saying this is not what i usually do?

cloud of unknowing

Don't usually do this sort of thing, but here seemed to be the appropriate outlet for it. Hm. 'This sort of thing.' Oh well.

Sous vide 3

76 pages impression numérique

 Couverture Dominique Lucci

Images : Dominique Lucci, Eric Demelis, Alkbazz, Gaspard Pitiot, Nuvish, Manon Guillet, Petite Poisone, Jean Kristau, Marcel Ruijters, Bernharda Xilko, Tony Burhouse, Margaux Salmi, Tatiana Samoïlova, Archie Fitzgerald, Caroline Dahyot, Mélès, Anne Van Der Linden, Pauline Musco, Françoise Cuxac, Sylvain Florin, Stéphane Mercier, Hui Zheng, Christian Dell’Ova, Marilyne Mangione  

Textes : Céline Maltère, Pauline Catherinot, Charles Pennequin, Laura Vazquez, Thibaud Bernard Helis, Louis Doucet, Eric Ferber, JosRoy, Gaspard Pitiot, Margaux Salmi

5euro+port (1,70euro)

Contactez-nous pour obtenir une copie

Novo Doba Festival Poster

Here is a poster illustration to be printed in silkscreen. It is announcing the new edition of the Novo Doba (New Era) Festival here in Belgrade. Below is the announcement and a text written as a thematic guide for our festival this year. The festival is taking place from 22nd to 27th of September this year with a lot of guests from the region and remote parts of the world. More information can be found on our facebook page.

Pseudocannibalism

Work in progress.

Bilderberg (Jan Lööf cover version)

This is my contribution to our upcoming Bilderberg-zine due for release on the underground comic fest "Bilderberg Konferenz" on the 26th of september. It's a cover of page 26 in Jan Lööf's "Felix och varulven", or let's say that I've paid tribute to one of Swedens greatest cartoonists... ever. To my disappointment I noticed that there was no penis in sight on his original page, so I added one for more adult entertainment.. Yeah, 'n some other shit with philosophical and sublime hidden messages..

The original page: 

Disturbing

Disturbing news from France. Some of you already heard, but today's nazis, the Front National, have no qualms about making life difficult for alternative artists - just months after the attacks on Charlie Hebdo. Case in point is an exhibition of Stu Mead and Richard Scheibner at Le Dernier Cri's headquarters in Marseilles.

The ugly political strategy of slander, false accusations about something unseen (the show was already over when protests were raised), we have seen it all before. You can support Le Dernier Cri by signing this petition. Say no to censorship.

¡M M!

Drawing for a local zine that also includes several hilarious comics by newbie Ducker Muriel Bellini

Poster in progress

Hello!

Hello to all. Thanks for the invite!
(Xilko)