The fragmented vision of the pornographer, a sense of detail sharpened like a butcher’s knife, the cutting of the pork butcher, a precision of biologist and the indecency of the anatomist: the universe of Theo Vonwood is undoubtedly surgical. In whole or in part, TVW works its bodies with a scalpel. A stall of meaty parts, which we do keep the beautiful pieces with well licked proportions. Bodies with a standardized aesthetic like these female anatomies, udders in front, wasp sizes and curved thighs. The monstrous bodies there are equally weighedare : a real freaks parade. The strangeness of her creatures – if she is monstrous – affirms a disturbing normality, or a conditioning to which nobody escapes. The treatment of the bodies is attached to it : enlarged and fragmented, muscular, detailed, plucked, smoothed and well proportioned… the contours are tirelessly worked, the perfect silhouettes, nothing beyond, except obscenity.
A normalized monstrosity
or a monstrous normality …
What then makes strangeness ? If the monster is itself “well done“, where is the (a)normality ? The question “Who ?” then come back with the recurrence of the theme of the mask, symbol of a schizophrenic anonymity. Madness stands out as a thread of thought woven from his 1st book Strangers (foreigners), to the last Normal journals(zine), or Twisted.
The (de) structuring of the boxes with which he likes to lose the narration between time and space – with the notorious influence of “abstract comix” – ultimately refers more to the world of cinema than to BD. The pornographic dimension is also cinematographic: close-ups, tight shots, fragmented shots. A processing of the image and the body (which sometimes are one), which goes so close, so deep, that we reach the organ, the pulpit, the cell, in an immodest molecular vision. We explore the part there, without necessarily evoking everything, each fragment not faking the role of the sign but embodying fully. Tirelessly interwoven, mutated organic, humanoid, robotic or chimeric bodies.
Fragments of bodies, time segments and space cells dance on the page. Interlocking organs tear, spread in uninterrupted flow. Classic three-step scenario, which at TVW takes a SF twist in five dimensions or more, evidenced by the fragmentation of plural cells where the drawing operates. Abstract narration unfolds in the multiplicity of parallel and simultaneous tenses of a same box (didn’t he give himself to heart in a musical project called “multiversal” ?). Long abandoned for the benefit of music, Vincent Pernollet aka TheoVonwood (b.1980 in France)
Returns to drawing in 2016 by working on the exhibition “Printnoiz” of Le Dernier Cri, in Marseille. There follow years of graphic meetings and multiple collaborations for collective editions:
§ Banzaï (Mad Series), Alkom’X (Garage L), 666666 Graphzine, SSSXXX 666666 and Vuur (Gabriel Delmas), Orchestra, Abyss, Instinct, Apocalypse (Collective Karbone), Gonzine (Sarah Fisthole), Morveux (BXL), Doppelganger (Marseille), Art Is Dead (Istanbul), Void Zine (Istanbul), Fanfanzizine (from Marseille), Couverture (Les Editions de la Chienne), Aequographe (Marseille), Bilderberg-Tintina and the omega art ( Berlin), Hanswursts Hochzeit (Berlin, Bilderberg-Bücherei n°5), Red Noise, Orange Wandering (Epox & Botox), les rats de la ville (Paris, Ronan Furax), Cockaïne Death (Paris, Lenté Chris, Seb Lorraine), Tue L’amour (Paris, Jaky Labrune) §
In 2017, he made his first book “Strangers” in screenprinting (4, 3 and 2 colors) with Epox and Botox Editions (created by Aude Carbone), followed by a self-published graphzine “Normal”(monochrome), printed in offset at La Platine in Marseille. In 2018 he released “Twisted” a solo zine, edited by Phantasticump Press , (created by Gabriel Delmas in Paris) and made a residency in Ljubiana, during which his next book, “Vox Clamantis Inferno”, was still being created.
At the end of 2018, he exhibited at Siva Galery “AKC MEDIKA” in Zaghreb, then back in Marseille, painted a 4-handed fresco at “L’Embobineuse” with his friend Andy Leuenberger for the Vendetta micro-publishing show organized by Le Dernier Cri. The exhibition “Amours Monstres” proposed at Même Pas Mal Edition in Marseille (may-june 2019) presents its latest experiments with acrylic, oil, china ink, original boards from 2016 to today (including Strangers, Normal and Twisted) and those announcing his next book “Vox Clamantis Inferno” to be released at Epox and Botox in 2020. He is currently working on several different projects, including a painting project with Jaky La Brune. His lines are organic, fine and sexual. Widely dreamers.
Marine Tsr
Entretien de Theo VonWood par Peggy Ann Mourot (Phantasticum Press, 2018)
LÖPÇÜK 