{"id":13748,"date":"2019-11-11T07:47:38","date_gmt":"2019-11-11T15:47:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/surrealismtoday.com\/?p=13748"},"modified":"2023-09-03T17:20:15","modified_gmt":"2023-09-04T00:20:15","slug":"gadzooxtian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/surrealismtoday.com\/gadzooxtian\/","title":{"rendered":"Gadzooxtian"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Biography<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Melbourne artist Xtian was conceived in East Germany but born in Hungary \u2013 that makes him one part Australian and two parts former communist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He\u2019s been actively collaging for two-plus decades \u2013 but is not adverse to making music or short animations. His works can best be described as questions, or \u201cedge of comprehension\u201d. He has exhibited and been published both locally and overseas \u2013 most recently by Oyster Moon Press\u2019 Hydrolith 2: Surrealist Research & Investigations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He is also one half of the now ten-year-old – and still growing! – exquisite corpse project The Infinite Collage (close to 80m long!), and is the creator of the longest-running surreal collage comic series The Micturating Angel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Xtian is the founder of Melbourne Kollage Ultra, and a contributing member of a number of other collage groups.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Artist Statement<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

(Before you proceed: the images are an extract from a much larger work.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“…too arty for comic book lovers, too comic booky for art lovers…”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Do you like comics? So do I. Marvel? Hell no! Okay, we\u2019re gonna be friends then.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is not an \u201cartist statement\u201d – that will come some other time. This is an introduction to “The Micturating Angel”. A spiel. A sales-pitch. But not an explanation \u2013 maybe an excuse? A necessary use of words to explain images that have already said all they can?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Do you like comics? I mean REAL comics, like Charles Burns\u2019 stuff, or Druillet\u2019s or Kago Shintaro or Nihei Tsutomu? Or “The Sandman” series by Neil Gaiman?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Right.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But what about weird stuff by the original Surrealists and the Dadas? Are you familiar with Max Ernst\u2019s collage novels or Gilliam\u2019s animations from Monty Python? What about free jazz, avant-garde music and the writings of William Burroughs? The (good) films of David Lynch? Those books from the 90s put out by V. Vale, the “REsearch” books? Are you familiar with the \u00e6sthetics of early industrial music culture or with the visuals of punk underground collages and photocopy art?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Am I laying this on too thick?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You wanted a statement, an introduction, so a schooling you\u2019re gonna get, son.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Right. We\u2019ve established the basics, so meet “The Micturating Angel”, the “Naked Lunch” of comic books! I unashamedly call it a comic, \u2018graphic novels\u2019 are for pretentious twats. But its a comic with a fatal flaw: too arty for comic book lovers, too comic booky for art lovers \u2013 where do you draw the line?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why even draw it? (And why even draw a comic in the first place?)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I grew up in Eastern Europe, pre-Fall-of-Communism, so my background is a little different from yours. I read mostly French comics translated into Magyar, I read nonsense literature from Germany and local writers and science books (never became an astronaut though). Emigration was a grand adventure and high school was a ridiculous shock: all the beauty of learning coupled with everyone hammering a round peg into a square whole.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Squares man. They can be so beautiful when they\u2019re not people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like the panels of a comic book. But I\u2019m getting ahead of myself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In high school, I invented surrealist writing \u2013 not being aware of its well-established existence. It saved my brain for greater things. Eventually, I met some actual surrealists, some actual poets, and artists and some actual interesting life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And here we are today \u2013 and I\u2019d like you to meet my children \u2013 The Micturating Angels (there\u2019s more than one).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Q: What does \u201cmicturating\u201d mean?
A: Pissing.
Q: Wut?
A: It\u2019s all you get.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A surreal collage art-comic series seven years in the making (and counting). Somewhere between 2ooo \u2013 3ooo collages in total, including the guest stars, the Secret Chiefs (guys in charge of this here Cosmos). Unraveling the adventures and sanity levels of young girls against their captive, oppressive world (is this a feminist comic? I don\u2019t know\u2026). Young girls against crappy old men and institutions, religious zealots, ignorance vs. science, freaks!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Drawing on source materials ranging from hardware catalogues to religious imagery to medical illustrations, alchemical instructions, furniture assembly instructions, \u201cdirty\u201d comics, mangas, giallos, and cannibalistic self-re-absorptions, the “Necronomicon” (containing not all but most of the sigils of the \u201cFifty Sacred Names of Marduk\u201d), engineer\u2019s manuals and mathematical formul\u00e6<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2013 do you still like comic books?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then you\u2019ll love this one! Playing with the conventions of comics to create striking visuals, adventures revealed through non-linear story-telling and complete non-sense dialogue \u2013 yes, the words are a red herring \u2013 “The Micturating Angel” is a unique comic that will never be understood by anyone \u2013 and that makes it an enduring mystery, I hope. (Aren\u2019t questions better than answers? No, they\u2019re not. But Bigfoot is more interesting when you DON\u2019T know that it\u2019s just mountain-lion footprints.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And there it is. My seven-year Grand Opus, unlike its predecessors (all the other books I\u2019ve made), and a never to be repeated exercise by me. And I WANT you to enjoy it! I really do, I want you to look beyond the confusion, I want you to stop trying to make sense of it and revel in what it actually IS: an ever-shifting series of nightmares laid out like the storyboard of a Hollywood blockbuster that will never be made.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Welcome aboard. I hope you like THIS comic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

– Xtian, 2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI LOVE your collage work! It is VERY surreal\u2026 your comics are great! \u2026 Good luck with your project!\u201d
– Rev. Ivan Stang, Church of the Subgenius<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201c\u2026 a very original comic…\u201d
– Surrealismo Internacional<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Books: lulu.com\/spotlight\/gadzooxtian<\/a>
Prints: redbubble.com\/people\/Gadzooxtian<\/a>
Facebook: facebook.com\/The-Micturating-Angel-1609957469288457<\/a>
Site: gadzooxtian.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Biography Melbourne artist Xtian was conceived in East Germany but born in Hungary \u2013 that makes him one part Australian and two parts former communist. He\u2019s been actively collaging for two-plus decades \u2013 but is not adverse to making music or short animations. His works can best be described as questions, or \u201cedge of comprehension\u201d. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":13746,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_breakdance_hide_in_design_set":false,"_breakdance_tags":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[137],"tags":[209,22,212,38,129,204,217,193],"genres":[185,223],"class_list":["post-13748","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-collage","tag-black-and-white","tag-conceptual","tag-disintegration","tag-figurative","tag-illustration","tag-juxtaposition","tag-psychological","tag-whimsical","genres-lowbrow-pop-surrealism","genres-surrealism"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/media.surrealismtoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/12190909\/frontCoverVol1_4web-copy-d99864b26970b0f8cbfdc5773fe228dd.jpg","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/surrealismtoday.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13748","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/surrealismtoday.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/surrealismtoday.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/surrealismtoday.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/surrealismtoday.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13748"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/surrealismtoday.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13748\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/surrealismtoday.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13746"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/surrealismtoday.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13748"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/surrealismtoday.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13748"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/surrealismtoday.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13748"},{"taxonomy":"genres","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/surrealismtoday.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/genres?post=13748"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}