Book review | The first-time author called his work a “masterpiece” and that is not far from the truth

Comics

Ivanda Jansone: Black and white masterpiece. The Great Pumpkin. 120 p.

Demands self-confidence to put the word masterpiece in the name of his work – even ironically. Ivanda Jansonen the first comic book is called A black and white masterpiece. Its cartoons are black and white. And extremely interesting.

The opening of the collection of stories, Original, threatens to strain the brain with its wordless narration.

The first page is a child's drawing of a bird and a person. On the next page, a woman examines it. The previous drawing is always part of the next one. As the series progresses, the picture starts to be treated badly, wrinkled and dipped in a jar of water. It rips.

Jansone explains clearly, but still the course of events bothers the head. The atmosphere is strange. You think about the purpose of the series of events on the way. The name and the end of the story hint that the generally valued originality is relative when the work lives and changes in use.

A collection the second story has the same name as the entire collection. There A black and white masterpiece refers to Toshio Matsumoto to the movie Funeral Parade of Roses (Japan 1969)which we are watching.

The experimental film is about transgender women in Tokyo's subculture landscape. Silla has a solid cult reputation, but not every Film junkie digs it at Takuu.

Before the film, the group discusses the relationship between the work and criticism. Someone claims that criticism would be the best way to familiarize yourself with the work. Another corrects that the best thing is to experience it yourself. It also fits Jansone's cartoons.

Jansone is playing again at the levels of reality. He draws the “real” events with angular lines and the soft gray tones of the pencil of the film rolling on the screen – as well as The original.

In the show, we meet another group of rowdy snobs. The Tuokio picture has a strong atmosphere, which the last picture turns surreal again. The story sticks in my mind, even though Jansone does not serve a simple message – or precisely because of that.

Creating a forest is a small-scale and wordless but visually insightful little piece. There, a woman crafts a forest out of checkered paper.

If you've ever been taught how to draw, for example in an art class, you've probably heard that you shouldn't draw on checkered paper, because the checkers spoil the impression. Jansone seems to challenge the doctrine and suggests that despite the squares, creation can seem real.

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Jansone's way of building dreamlike collapsing houses of cards from everyday things arouses amazement and admiration.

Light for everyone – in the story, a woman buys a bright light bulb on a black and wet night in November and walks home in dreary weather, where she ends up watching a reality TV show pretending to be a dream.

Reality gets mixed up again. Now Jansone encourages you to trust your own reason in distinguishing between reality and a dream.

The final story Mass hypnosis at first addresses the reader as if to hypnotize you from the pages of a comic book. However, it is a self-care application that the train passenger is immersed in on their mobile phone.

The application roars about opening common channels, even though everyone on the train is isolated with headphones in their ears to the private depths of their phones.

Ivanda Jansone (b. 1982) is also an illustrator and graphic designer. He is from Latvia, but has lived in Finland since 2008.

First born A black and white masterpiece is surely a surrealistic kimara. Jansone's way of building dreamlike collapsing houses of cards from everyday things arouses amazement and admiration.

The stories play with small observations and meanings, push to see the world differently. Any bigger or clearer messages would only break the strange atmosphere, which is the collection's greatest asset.