THE FATHER COSTUME

IMAGES BY MATTHEW RITCHIE

FICTION BY BEN MARCUS

Behold a stunning world, made mostly of water, where clothing changes people's behavior and time itself can be worn and discarded like cloth. Witness a father who takes his two boys out to sea, in flight from some menace at home, thus launching their adventures in a strange and dangerous territory. Artist Matthew Ritchie's striking images blend scientific diagramming with vivid, colorful renderings of the apocalypse, while writer Ben Marcus's cold prose plumbs the inner workings of two boys caught out at sea with a father whose costumes grow increasingly menacing. Looking at [Matthew Ritchie's] paintings is like being in Dorothy's cyclone--one minute a one-celled organism wheels by, the next minute a sequence of skulls streams along from a school chart on evolution.

Hardcover: 90 pages
Publisher: Artspace Books (May 15, 2002)
ISBN: 1891273035
Dimensions: 8.0 x 6.1 x 0.3 inches