Exquisite Crocodiles, the latest effort by Ivan Manuppelli in art Hurricane, is not a traditional graphic novel, but a true surrealist interactive work, an astonishing graphic and fantastical mechanism in which the reader, as he or she flips through the book, becomes its author in the first person, constructing page after page of a series of possible surrealist artists, composed of parts of the real protagonists of the movement.
In fact, each page is cut into 4 vertical strips: the left pages each house the figure of an artist divided into 4 levels from top to bottom, the right pages their biography, similarly divided into 4 levels. By turning and variously juxtaposing the 4 strips of the different biographies, new, fantastic artists are generated, in which Magritte’s bowler hat head is followed by Breton’s bust, Dali’s cane, and finally Groucho Marx’s shoes, thus giving body to an imaginary artist, whose amazing biography can be read on the facing page.
It is the technique that the Surrealists called the cadavre exquis, with which they composed poems, stories and drawings in which one author wrote one line, another the next, a third the one after that, thus generating collective works, which subverted the usual logic, exploding it into a phantasmagoria of inventions.
Hurricane builds a perfect device, a clockwork of surprising inventions, thanks to his ironic, biting and unmistakable style, which catches us in his fantastic net, in which we would never stop playing.
Published on the occasion of the exhibition:
DALÍ, MAGRITTE, MAN RAY AND SURREALISM
MUDEC, March 22-July 30, 2023
HURRICANE – Born Ivan Manuppelli (Milan, 1985) is the author of the satirical series “I Sopravvissuti,” published regularly in the newspaper “il manifesto.” As an author he has published in the magazines “Frigidaire,” “Il Male di Vauro e Vincino,” “linus,” “Splatter,” and “Mineshaft.” Since 2018, he has been a regular contributor for the legendary American magazine “MAD” and currently draws for the magazine “La Revue Dessinée Italia.”
