19 July 2013 Nicolas Presl will be a guest of the Conrad Festival
Divine Colonie – the second comic book by outstanding graphic artists Nicolas Presl, author of the great Fabrica, will be published in October, under the imprint of the Lokator publishing house. The artist will promote his latest publication during this year's edition of the Conrad Festival. The Divine Colonie graphic novel is filled with references to literature and art (Dante, Piero della Francesca, Joseph Conrad). It is a moving story of the extinction of otherness which we deprive the right to exist of, because it does not remind us of anything that we believe in. Come and join us in Krakow between the 21st and the 27th of October!
Nicolas Presl was born in Vendée in 1976. After a short career as a stonemason, he devoted himself to drawing comic books. In his first three books, published by Atrabile (Priape – 2006, Divine Colonie – Lokator 2013, and Fabrica – Lokator 2013), he developed his distinctive style, easily recognisable both thanks to connections with modern painting (Grosz, Picasso) and the selection of narration without text. He demonstrates an extraordinary sensitivity to history in all his works. This is also shown in the graphic book entitled Le fils de l’ours pere, published in 2010 by The Hoochie Poochie.
Divine Colonie. 15th-century Europe, probably one of Italian duchies. A young man coming from a wealthy family of fervent Catholics dreams a nightmare of damnation: he descends into the infernal abyss, where he meets himself condemned to eternal agony in the company of villains and scoundrels. He buys a home altar depicting the crucifixion from a painter who paints family portraits commissioned by his father. In its centre, there is the well-known scene with three crosses. Among the people gathered around the dying Christ stands the young man, his father, and a mysterious poet adorned with a laurel. The left wing of the altar gives the impression of paradise, and the right one – of hell. The painting is strikingly similar to his nightmare. The young man decides to destroy his passions in order to avoid punishment for his sins.
However, his father sends him to an African colony. There, he gets to know a different culture that fascinates and terrifies him at the same time because of its overly free attitude towards corporeality. The young man prays in front of the altar, flagellates himself until he bleeds, exercises his will and strives in vain to control the desires that awake in him. In his dreams, he is visited by the poet. He leads the young man through consecutive stages of history (from antiquity to the 20th century), showing him disasters caused by man in order for him to understand that the source of conflict is the blind belief in the indisputable character of our value systems. Will the young man learn from the poet’s lesson? Will he abandon the work of destruction that he inherited? Will he escape his destiny?
Source: Lokator
