Black Medicine Book

Helge Reumann is an artist as discreet as he is precious, and who has nevertheless not been unworthy over the past two decades: present here in the magazine Bile noire, and spreading pages with various publishers, from Rouergue to UDA, via L Association or the Dernier Cri, without forgetting the incredible Elvis Road, concocted with his then accomplice Xavier Robel, a magnificent 9m long leporello. We despaired at not being able to materialize a more substantial collaboration with this unique author, we are finally satisfied with this imposing Black Medicine Book. Through his most recent works (paintings, casts and drawings), Reumann's entire universe unfolds here, a world full of tension and violence, both very physical when hordes of thugs attack, armed with nailed bats or bladed weapons, but also a more muted violence – this violence which acts by standardizing the world, by transforming it into a giant desert, an arid and cold Earth, devoid of feeling, and delivered to the law of stronger. And then there is this mental violence too, that which washes brains and annihilates free will, which creates fanaticism and generates even more violence... If there is often humor, there is little hope in Reumann's images, and the tribes of anonymous madmen who cross these landscapes as colorful as they are desolate seem to suggest to us that if hell exists, it is populated by demons with human faces. Introduction by Charles Burns, preface by Christian Rosset (bilingual French–English text).