Strong Eye Contact

By Christopher Adams. Published by 2D Cloud.

Softcover, 104 pages, colour, perfect pound, 2013

Part comic strip collection, part art book, the reader is led by this quixotic, Buster Keaton-like figure through a kaleidoscope of crystalline memory fragments, he tries, with limited success, to be a typical American: using consumer products, failed vacations, and fabricated family life.

Using mediums often associated with childhood mark-making (crayons, colored pens, markers) gives the book a simplistic sheen that belies the formal sophistication operating just beneath the surface. This day to day saga is wet and alive; landscapes pop with mountainous close-ups, cacti, abstracted-patterns, confusion, vast empty spaces and gaps – cartooning as a potent puzzle where the strangest magic happens inside the reader's mind.