"Album" by Paul Madonna

For the Electric Works "(In What Era Will You Get Stuck?)" show, Madonna, whose work redefines comics by combining art and literature, rethinks the process of creating a body of work for exhibition. Album puts the book first. As the primary show object, Album is the focus and final product, with the art hung on the walls serving as a catalog for the book.  A play on single panel cartoons, Madonna’s large-scale (up to 50 by 60 inches) meticulously drawn pen and ink images of 1970s and 80s childhood-era toys, swell the poignancy of the punch line. Wanting the work to live beyond the large two-dimensional panels hung on a gallery wall, Madonna offers the book object as portable art, stemming from his life’s career of zine and book-making, and the love of the book as a tangible, tactile art form. Transformed beyond merely a record of the exhibition, Album is as much a conversation between the artist and reader about the impetus that led to the creation of the drawings, as well as a docume