AAIEEE!

Ray Yoshida

1996

collage

14" x 22"

Ray Yoshida began cutting out speech bubbles and architectural elements from comic strips in 1967 as a way to refresh his artistic practice. H collected thousands of these “specimens,” as he called them, which he stored in a variety of canisters around his Chicago apartment—even inside cough-drop tins.

This practice followed him throughout his career and served as inspiration for his students. Yoshida would often ask his students, “How many ways can an object be represented?” With his specimen collages, Yoshida generates a new way in which to engage with comics. There is no narrative nor order to the fragments, instead Yoshida presents an enigmatic pattern that encourages contemplation of the encoded systems of communication that are inherently tied to the printed word.

Credit

The Bill McClain Collection of Chicago Imagism