Review by Graham Johnstone
Edifice, by designer/illustrator Andzrej Klimowski, is a largely wordless graphic ‘novel’. It’s a series of interwoven vignettes set in the the edifice of the title, an apartment block in “the dream city of Engelstadt”.
The idea isn’t new, in comics alone inspiring Building Stories and Montague Terrace, but Klimowski’s is sufficiently different, focussing on strange phenomena in and around the building, and favouring imagery over narrative.
Professor Dorlan (from Klimowski’s earlier Horace Dorlan), is planning a multimedia presentation for a Christmas party that will gather the cast. That includes composer/teacher Mr Pascali, Lady Dendrite, (whose late husband endures in her piano), a mother and her young son Henry, and motorbike and sidecar couple Dennis and Denise. The latter could be a younger Dorlan and Dendrite, adding a sense of mutable identities.
It opens with the arrival of a man in a Tarboosh hat (aka Fez), presumably, the later mentioned Mr Nasser. The name and headgear, along with a Sphinx statuette, clumsily allude to Egypt. Yet, his namesake President Nasser was a moderniser sweeping away Egypt’s old order symbolised by… yes, the Tarboosh. There’s no hint of that here. Also, the Sphinx in this Nasser’s bedroom transforming into a naked enchantress, (later with butterfly wings) is cliché upon regressive trope. The phallic single entendre of an obelisk statuette reinforces a poor start.
Happily, it improves, the phenomena others experience feeling more fresh and poetic, and often woven together in Monty Python style segues. Henry watches Dennis and Denise passing on their motorbike and sidecar. The ‘camera’ then follows the couple until they drive past a hospital, where we see a ‘hallucinating’ patient, and an X-ray revealing a dark ‘cloud’ in his head. Perhaps the whole book is his hallucination, as outside, Denise’s wind-blown hair forms a similar cloud. This phenomenon will be experienced by other characters, encroaching on the building, and so Dorlan’s event. Other phenomena breach boundaries within the building, leaks drip through ceilings, perhaps drawn to the basement pool, and Nasser’s obelisk breaks through Dendrite’s floor above. That’s all richer, and more resonant than the weak start.
Various elements point out of the “dream city” to real people, other artworks, and ideas, offering (Professor) Klimowski’s artistic thesis, marshalled by author-surrogate Dorlan. ‘Professor Blegvad’ suggests (visual/musical artiste and Klimowski associate) Peter Blegvad. Like Ezra Pound’s fragmentary modernist poem The Cantos (name-dropped here), narrative is elusive, but imagery abundant. Klimowski’s invocation of such a monumental work (written over six decades, partly in prison…) feels like a plea for status by association. However, Pound’s metaphor of iron filings “disconnected but [drawn by a magnet] into the shape of rose” could be the inspiration for Klimowski’s gathering cloud, or a broader statement of intent. Certainly, Edifice feels less like a novel than poetry or music, welcoming improvisation, and reprising motifs with variations.
Klimowski’s art has a cultivated simplicity. It’s rendered in pencil/charcoal, without inking/erasing, so limiting reworking, and necessitating boldness. Some weak panels, then, are a fair trade off. His compositions, often artfully off right angles, have a subtle tension to them. He deftly balances organic and geometric forms: a cabbage writhing upon a table; or a hair-towel wrapped like a rose, against bathroom tiles. Displaced parquet flooring, where Nasser’s obelisk penetrates the room above, is among the best of many vivid details, over these appealing pages.
Readers seeking plot and character arcs should look elsewhere, but those attracted by an intriguing web of visual allusions, should find it an enticing mystery. Certainly, Edifice is like little else in graphic novels, and lingers in the mind begging a reread.
