“My job is basically to build a bridge between what I want to say and what people will understand. And sometimes it has nothing to do with it.” This reflection is made with laughter by the illustrator, cartoonist and graphic humorist Riki Blanco shortly after having left the students of the historic Toledo School of Art and also a good part of the teaching staff stupefied.
This artist is aware that he does not make easy humor. Or at least not for all audiences. He himself recognizes that reading comprehension is essential and that the opposite, which “does not even have a name”, makes “visual culture” impossible.
Known mainly in the field of editorial and press illustration, Riki Blanco’s name appears in a hundred publications. He has made illustrations for a large number of national and international media, including elDiario.esand has collaborated on creative projects of different kinds.
His work is developed with clients such as The New Yorker, The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Hollywood Reporter, Oprah Magazine, Newsweek and Discovery Channel, among many others. He combines all this with experimental theater, recital, poetry, narrative, video creation and musical composition.
On the occasion of his latest publication, ‘Book of Complaints’, he has decided to give another look to the “boring” literary presentations. “I mix plays that I have done with the podcast (‘The Containment’). “They are ideas that, instead of being vignettes, become stories told,” he details. In fact, years ago he presented another of his books talking only about his failures.
And all this display of versatility is what he has carried out at the Toledo School of Art, whose description is almost impossible due to its fusion of styles and originality.
For example, several buttons: its staging begins with the video broadcast of some tears of San Lorenzo, known as Perseids, which never occur. “With hope, but without expectations,” an announcer spends hours looking at a starry sky but without a single movement, only with the chirping of crickets in the background. That’s where the first laughs start.
From there we jump to a reinterpretation of what is known as the “language of fans” but which he transfers to the “language of cutlery”: as we place them on the plate, we send different messages such as: “Let me know if I have something between my teeth” or “I’m shitting myself.”
After performing ‘El Karaoke de los Vagos’ with the public, which generally consists of “moving the lips” (in the videos that are projected at the same time there is a subliminal language in reference to what type of lips he refers to), Riki Blanco offers a dissertation on bubble wrap, the ones that “we like to explode so much.” He is convinced that every bubble is in a human being, that that paper is “a big voodoo doll” and that every time we burst a bubble, we end a human life. “Be careful with that, because, although the possibilities are remote, the next one could be you,” he warns.
From porn videos to night classes for vampires
This graphic comedian also has his own theories about false teeth, he has different alternatives about the number 69 as a sexual position and a hilarious and brief story about a Ouija board printing press with “zero personnel costs”, because they make themselves without anyone to help. apparently start the machines.
Among these small essays, mini-theatrical pieces and videos, one of the ones that the Art School public likes most is the song in which it makes clear an irrefutable truth, which goes like this: “When the porn video ends, you come out reflected in the screen. What a downturn. You are your consolation prize.” In order not to declare himself innocent, it is precisely the face of the cartoonist that appears reflected on the screen.
Riki Blanco’s universe does not stop there. His dissertations lead him to proclaim the enormous importance of a supposed alcayata that appears in Picasso’s painting ‘Guernica’. According to him, this element carries all the “pressure and responsibility” of this work of art. But after that, he also starts singing about the fact that in vampire night classes no line can be crossed over another. Basically, because a cross is formed and the vampire dies. He illustrates it with cinematographic images of Count Dracula having a very bad time while some lines cross over others.
In the end, the illustrator costs his experiences with the wounds he finds on his body after a night of partying and also gives a little kick to the ‘coaches’ by calling for them to pursue their dreams, but “with a certain flow, without stress, pursuing them.” with indifference, in a zigzag.”
This is only the first part of its staging before the students of the Art School. He then focuses on many of his vignettes asking for the participation of attendees. There the fun also becomes art. They are not easy vignettes. They are ideas about politics, human relationships, emotions, identity, the passage of time and culture. Some are more surreal, others more representative, but most are loaded with “Martian” symbolism.
There is a common philosophy in all of them: appealing to intelligence, to reflection, to some lesson, not about life, but for that specific moment. Riki Blanco himself tells us that he often finishes them himself and thinks “Is this understood?” With that question he has challenged this medium and also the attendees, garnering affirmative responses.
In reality, this insecurity is only intermittent, because he recognizes that after years of baggage, he works trusting in his intuition. “I let my subconscious work as a spectator of my own nonsense and my martianism”he explains.
I am very interested in human things, psychology, philosophy, but all of that is always linked to politics.
“I cannot divide or dissociate between human relationships and political and social consciousness. What doesn’t interest me much is current affairs, because it changes, but at the same time everything happens again. I am very interested in human things, psychology, philosophy, but all of that is always linked to politics.”
The cartoonist also talks about the need for bias. “To be able to talk about something, to be agile and brief, you have to do without things that are understood. It’s a pact. It is also dangerous because sometimes clichés are perpetuated, but when the focus is on another message, it is better to forget about the tributaries and stay with that message.”
Riki Blanco constantly refers to his situation “passing through” in the world of graphic humor. “Now is my moment of ‘hello, I just arrived, but you’ll probably end up kicking me out,’” he says, laughing. And it’s not that he wants to leave, it’s that he believes that one day he will say something he shouldn’t. “But at the moment I feel very comfortable and it really is the space in which I find my greatest creative freedom. Every day I have the opportunity to change. For me now, it is the best, and I don’t think about anything else.”
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