Garden

👌🏿

Working on the edge between abstraction and representation, Yokoyama is undoubtedly one of the most important figures in comics today. In "Garden", a large group of explorers navigates a vast artificial landscape. The strange interactions between characters (an army of rascally automatons) and materials on the page always seem to be on the verge of breaking down into abstraction. The "language" of comics is threatened.The world that emerges is radical, extravagant, and limitless, but for the most part seems possible. You could actually build most of the things that appear in a Yokoyama comic, but who would finance an artificial mountain range or a city on coasters? Yokoyama raises unanswerable questions about technology, public space, the environment, consumerism, and desire."Garden" is probably Yokoyama's best work to date, alongside "Travel". Not just comics readers, but anyone interested in abstract art, conceptual architecture and design, experimental narrative, or open-ended science fiction should check it out.