(comic images taken from the preview on Megan Delyani's website )
The back of Megan Delyani's SPACES says:
Is it art?
Is it a comic?
Is it a load of BS?
It's probably all three.
which feels like an unfortunate hedge to me, on a project that doesn't need to apologize for itself. 16 pages of empty frames--a lot of work to go to when you could, if you were doing a load of BS, just take one page and copy it 16 times! why waste time drawing each one?
It's not a defense I'm here for. This kind of conceptual, abstract comic work was in the cards from the moment Jean Arp dropped pieces of paper on a canvas and for his rectangles arranged by chance, to pick one example. Go back to 1916 and bug him about it--I'm not here to debate whether Delyani's efforts are "art" or not, or just a put on or whatever.
What do we do with a comic of all blank frames though? Actually, I find it hard to write about this work, cause it's so easy to narrativize my own experience, preemptively tell my own impressions to myself in the form of an essay while I'm writing it. It's easy, with a work that's in part conceptual and asks "what is a comic" style questions, to get bogged down intellectually and miss the frames for the signifiers. I tried to beat that back by writing this review stoned; I got as far as: "(I'm so high right now as I compose this post. I'm pumpkin pied)" and didn't write any more. So much for writing high and editing sober.
Ok. what's the experience? it feels bifurcated to me. Sometimes I read the comic one way, sometimes another. Sometimes I hardly read it at all: the page becomes a whole composition, like a color field painting, just an arrangement of rectangles. Others, I picture, vaguely, what panel contents could fill up these frames. What action do they suggest? in that mode there's something didactic about SPACES, like it's teaching me to really look at pages I would have ignored before. I always turned towards regularized frame structure, and structure breaking, and saw a quick wiggle back and forth between a long and a short panel as just structurelessness, frames dictated by their contents. stripped of rhetorical purpose, the need to fit to a panel subject, they feel free to stand on their own, with their own irregular rhythm. there's a lot of halves and thirds in this, the old drawing board standard, going all the way back to companies like EC and probably further, boards produced that had divisions for panels already printed on them. they aren't dictated here by the sometimes draconian EC scripts--what could fill them now?
the frames can become a drama themselves, little clusters of interrelations that might shockingly transform or counterpoise. A page with two thin rectangles framing a central square, then the next strip is just two squares, the last strip one big panel. it feels like a pushing towards something, the frames getting more weighty and significant as they go down the page. Then the next page: much more chaotic, no regularity in the vertical divisions of the strips, and one panel even sliced in two horizontally. A response to the rhythmic buildup of the previous page, that increasing weight forcing a collapse of order? it's suggestive, at least.
then there's the thin horizontal strips. narration? it suggests a line of text, because of how english language script is written typically in horizontal scripts. but the language of comics might suggest something else. even narration text isn't typically broken out into its own frames separated by gutters. what illustration might go into something like this? decorative elements? or should we read the frames as just participants in the drama themselves? there's a few pages towards the end where a bunch of these appear, alongside more dramatic and irregular divisions again of each strip. this set of three or so pages feels chaotic, like ideas intruding upon each other in rapid succession. then, four squares and one solid final punctuating panel, a set of definitive statements. it's breathtaking. no, really, I'm not pulling your leg here! I see it and I gasp.
and then the last page is unique among all of them, what I came to think of as a "window" arrangement of frames (short, long, short) at the top, giving way to one massive frame... interrupted by a small inset square at the very end, like a final punctuation. it's a satisfying exhale of an ending for the whole arc of a comic all about the rhythm and play of spaces.
what a cool little art object! I'm so glad I was able to pick up a physical copy at a recent zine fair (at a repurposed grocery store space now taken over by a punk flea market in cap hill, which is awesome). you can also get physical copies in various ways--maybe pick one up through local art coop Push/Pull? I'd love to see more work exploring the spaces comics are made of.