“Magma”, in Strapazin no. 130

The Fumetto International Comix Festival, held last April in Luzern, Switzerland, is probably the closest one has to contemporary art fairs, probably. Now, there’s a number of shows which present new work, but more often than not those are small gallery shows. European festivals seem also to be more prone to present original art from comics projects as art exhibitions, and less as a commercial-drive convention, but there’s always a mixture of those dimensions (and beyond). In any case, Fumetto goes a little further, by commissioning new work, and usually in innovative ways.

For this edition, Fumetto repeated a previous experience of bringing together local/closer artists to their own scene with people from a different tradition. “Magma” is a project that brought together the Swiss artists Fanny Vaucher, Corinne Odermatt and the colective Ampel, the Lithuanian artist Anete Melece, and the Brazilian artists Fábio Zimbres, Diego Gerlach, Rafael Coutinho and Talita Hoffman. In order to create their respective works, they have echanged a number of imagens, ideas, and concepts, which they used in various degrees and effects to come up with new work.

Unfortunately, I was not able to attend to the show, but I was invited not only to watch the backstage activity, as well as to write an essay about it, which was published along with the artist’s original work in the 130th issue of the Swiss magazine Strapazin. The material has been published in both Portuguese and German, and you can check it here.

I want to thank Jana Jakoubek, Fumetto’s art director, Nik Neves, and Talaya Schmid, Strapazin‘s editor,  for the invitation, friendship and trust.