LUZ Vernon Subutex

Joining forces with Virginie Despentes, Luz has brought his artistic powers to bear on Despentes’ celebrated trilogy Vernon Subutex. Together, artist and writer have turned the original into a graphic novel, adapting the weird and wacky narrative with its hallucinatory cast of characters revolving around an erstwhile proprietor of a Parisian record store who wants nothing much to do with the modern world. As with all the albums he has produced since 2015 – but perhaps even more so here – in Vernon Subutex (Albin Michel) Luz offers us a sharp-eyed portrait of humanity. Putting his own stamp on a story that is as much about absence as it is about love, a story of relentless energy and quiet introspection, of vengeance and serendipity, Luz demonstrates his consummate skill and pulls out all the stops in terms of graphic and narrative inventiveness. Employing a combination of Indian ink and acrylics, and with what can only be described as infinite generosity, he creates a universe bursting with both colour and emotion, where page after page sees the artist tackling encapsulation and mise en scène with enormous ingenuity. Luz’s lively drawing style, at once relaxed and controlled, perfectly serves the dense and richly allusive narrative. Up until 26 November, the gallery will be showing a carefully chosen selection of pages taken from the two volumes of Vernon Subutex, as well as two gigantic drawings made specially for the occasion.

Private view: Thursday 20 October 2022, from 6.00 pm to 8.30 pm