Plaza (French edition) - Yuichi Yokoyama

Plaza by Yokoyama Yuichi, a French version published by Éditions Matière -- part of my first shipment from this wonderful publisher of abstract and often wordless comics / ISBN 9782916383651 / A large 240-page paperback, 8.25 x 11.5 inches (making it the biggest of his books, I think)

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Matt Seneca in the Comics Journal: "This book feels like a beautiful map of unfamiliar territory written in a foreign language - flummoxing to be sure, but an artifact to be prized nonetheless."

Google Translate did a decent job with the description: "On a sort of conveyor belt that serves as a stage parade the most heterogeneous objects, the most grotesque assemblages and acrobatics performed by disturbing costumed characters. Below the stage, despite the physical attacks to which it is constantly the object, the audience manifests a growing fervor, an excitement which soon borders on mystical ecstasy. Plaza is a frantic carnival parade that offers no respite, which never betrays no slowing down. Plaza is a Dionysian mechanical feast, a grandiose spectacle that celebrates the origins of the universe, animism, gods, artifacts, dedication, celebration itself, totalitarianism and the fourth dimension. Plaza is a visual phantasmagoria, half hidden behind the heavy onomatopoeias that its tumult engenders. Plaza is a ceremony dedicated to movement, the dynamics of forms and fantasy, chaos and creation. Plaza is Yokoyama’s new and joyful manifesto for free comics."

Yokoyama is the author of Travel, New Engineering, Color Engineering and Garden (all published by PictureBox). He was the subject of a one-man show at The Kawasaki City Museum in 2010, and has exhibited in galleries and museums in Tokyo, Singapore, Rome and San Francisco. He lives and works in the suburbs of Tokyo.