Drawings on display @ Galerie Nagel Draxler Berlin till Sept 2 Bradley à Bradley now available from Éditions çà et là
In 2023 I collaborated with Theo Triantafyllidis on concepts for his videogame project "Feral Metaverse". The game debuted at Galerie Nagel Draxler, Berlin, where my original concept drawings were on display
"Bradley à Bradley est un véritable tour de force. L’auteur canadien virtuose Connor Willumsen montre une impressionnante maîtrise graphique, dans une histoire mêlant réalité et imaginaire avec en toile de fond Las Vegas, symbole d’une société en trompe l’œil dévorée par le consumérisme, la fascination pour les célébrités et l’ultra capitalisme."
Writing, Layout & Story:
Connor Willumsen
Direction & Photography:
Fatine-Violette Sabiri
Styling:
Shahan Assadourian
Casting:
Michèle Arismandez
Makeup:
Carole Méthot
Models:
Pleure, Henri, Boudah & Caroline
A full tabloid comic that appears monthly in Frank Santoro's Hype Pup zine.
The runner believed life was a linear mechanical process of perpetual momentum endured in activewear, and the impersonator saw it as self-actualizing power struggle for identity and a quest for gold. Burdened by their own success and an aimless desire, they embark on an odyssey that takes them from the cavernous buffet halls of the near future Las Vegas strip, and into the a scorched earth stretched out before them.
"Connor doesn't just show celebrity for what it is (an unread contract, hastily signed); he doggedly pursues its terms and repercussions into a familiar, shifting zone of comic unreality, a psychic space more intuited than defined. Improbably, Bradley of Him finds the whole world in fame and its ubiquitous cosigners--a book as sensitive and sweeping in its observations as it is sly."
- George Elkind (contributing writer, The Comics Journal and Detroit Metro Times)
"A masterpiece. With a virtuosic hand that positions cartooning in all its various modes—as design, as symbol, as representation—Willumsen burrows into the psychic torture of the self amid the entitlement and narcissism of a culturally bereft Las Vegas. It ripples outward, to the limits of the American ethos that anything wanted—intellectually, spiritually, physically—can be grabbed with both hands if desired, and to the acute melancholic madness of our intense yearnings."
— Sammy Harkham (cartoonist-editor, Kramers Ergot, Crickets)
"One way or another, Willumsen always finds a way to translate his extraordinary imagination into imagery that not only catches, but fully absorbs, the attention of the reader, and that’s no mean feat considering the sheer size, scale, and scope of his ambition. Like his protagonist, he’s forever pushing himself — he never stops running ... Bradley Of Him is a book that you’ll want to obtain immediately, and one that will probably be much-discussed come our own end-of-year “awards season” in comics as many of us will be in the midst of our fifth or sixth re-read of it at that point, and picking up something new from it each time."
- Ryan Carey, Solrad
"The morphing story line is perfectly matched by Willumsen’s precisely modulated pencil drawings that shift effortlessly from confident minimalism to detailed landscapes. This artful, ambiguous character study will both challenge and fascinate adventurous art comics readers."
- Publishers Weekly
"Willumsen is an expert draftsman and designer, presenting pages that swirl with action and occasionally laugh-out-loud funny dialog as scenes segue into one another with an often dreamlike quality ... Willumsen pokes fun at the vapidity of celebrity culture and seems interested in satirizing a particularly American sense of entitlement, but ultimately he obscures whatever point he has in mind in favor of remaining willfully, and fascinatingly, perplexing."
- Thomas L. Batten, Library Journal
"From the image of a stubborn runner in an inhospitable landscape, Willumsen has built up a hilarious and philosophically challenging meditation on individuality, capitalism, celebrity, connection — and, under it all, absurdity."
- Etelka Lehoczky, NPR
"Bradley of Him is as much a Challenging Work as any Willumsen, an avant-garde comic that uses its author's incredible skill to attempt maneuvers which would completely derail a project by a lesser talent. It's manifestly the work of a genius, but one whose delights beg consideration more than enjoyment. It's really, really weird. If you're not down for that, it runs right past you."
- Matt Seneca, The Comics Journal
"Bradley of Him feels like a new cult classic, an addition to the lexicon of modern outsider storytellers and haunted urban dreamers. It’s densely packed with exchanges, inventories, people. It’s Nevada, your choices are crowds and air conditioning or nobody and the baking sun. Willumsen loads each page. Figures appear over and over, a phénakisticope of myriad angles, a hundred bees locked into a honeycomb with largely invisible edges. Willumsen has mostly done away with drawing panel borders. The art is held behind walls that aren’t there, contained by where the panel should end, phantom gutters."
- Arpad Okay, The BEat
" Bradley of Him delivers an engagingly idiosyncratic visual approach that challenges comics conventions while still providing the pleasures of a vividly told visual tale."
- Chris Gavaler, Pop Matters
A genre-based comics anthology: Cyberpunk. Featuring comics by Freddy Carrasco, Sophia Foster-Dimino, Kelly K, Giannis Milonogiannis, Mushbuh, Jonathan Djob Nkondo & Tonči Zonjić. Cover by Freddy Carrasco.
"Anti-Gone is a new mixed reality performance by inspired the comic book of the same name by Connor Willumsen. Anti-Gone incorporates live performance with real time simulation to explore the social impacts of technology, privilege and the beginnings and ends of worlds."
In the midst of uncertainty, Anti-Gone is offering a soothing experience with a critical view on the privilege of escape.
More Info:
http://slimetech.org/anti-gone/
Credits
Director: Theo Triantafyllidis
Writer: Connor Willumsen
Production Manager: Polina Miliou
Key Collaborator: Matthew Doyle
Performance Team
Cast: Lindsey Normington, Zana Gankhuyag, Matthew Doyle, Sam Congdon
Composer and Live Music Performance: Cameron Stallones
Sound: Jeffrey Alan Scudder
Game Engine Performer: Theo Triantafyllidis
Motion Capture and Movement Coach: Rachel Ho
Game Engine Team
Lead Artist: Theo Triantafylldis
Lead Programmer: Stalgia Grigg
Lead 3D Character Designer: Joseph Melhuish
3D Artists: Sara Drake, Ryan Decker, Siyao Zheng
Commissioned and Produced by Onassis Culture
Motion Capture technology provided by Noitom MoCap.
Special thanks to:
Sundance New Frontier
The Breeder Gallery
Meredith Rosen Gallery
Human Resources Los Angeles
UCLA Design Media Arts
"I Needed The Discounts" is a full tabloid sized comic printed in the January 5th 2020 edition of The New York Times as part of "The Privacy Project", a section of original art and writting covering the subject of tech and privacy. A web version was also made available on nytimes.com.
Curated by cartoonist Sammy Harkham, KE10 features work by R. Crumb, Dash Shaw, David Collier, Anouk Ricard, C.F., Jason Murphy, Blutch, Shary Flenniken, Johnny Ryan, John Pham, Ron Regé Jr., Simon Hanselmann, Anna Haifisch, Ivan Brunetti, David Amram, Helge Reumann, Frank King, Steve Weissman, Aisha Franz, Leon Sadler, Adam Buttrick, Archer Prewitt, Connor Willumsen, Bendik Kaltenborn, Will Sweeney, Rick Altergott, Kim Deitch, Marc Bell, and Harkham himself.
Anti-Gone is a vague and expansive ocean world in which every comfort is availabe to those willing to kill their time searching for it - a book designed to chart an outline around the invisible territory that gratification excludes.
"Readers who enjoy the boundary-pushing work of cartoonists such as Dash Shaw and Olivier Schrauwen will freely surrender to Willumsen's equally dreamlike world."
- Publishers Weekly
"Connor Willumsen is a blackbelt of formalism in comics. There is an unending sense of "thinking" in this book. Every angle and every option is considered."
- Caleb Orecchio, Comics Workbook
"From beginning to end, Willumsen pushes you in the deep end and forces you to tread over adroit uncertainty, using water as a stand-in for not only the fragile nature of nostalgia and relationships, but your very own mind. Anti-Gone is about all these things. At least I think so."
- RJ Casey, The Comics Journal
"Connor Willumsen's first graphic novel, Anti-Gone, beautifully follows a couple who drift on a small boat and go see a movie on drugs. It felt to me a bit like a Tao Lin novel in that it focuses on young people who spend their time shopping for clothes and entertainment/drugs."
- Dash Shaw, The Comics Journal
"Willumsen's [Anti-Gone] might be the indie house's crowning glory."
- Abraham Riesman, Vulture
"Illustrated with a virtuoso command of pose and movement, with imaginative and surreal flourishes throughout, Anti-Gone is one of the year's most impressive releases."
- Gosh! Comics
"With beautiful line art, Willumsen tells one of the oddest stories of the year, but also one of the most visually compelling and formally striking."
- Shea Hennum, The A.V. Club
"You get an odd combination of super contemporary, minimalist, and economical cartooning - the sort of artistic sensibility you expect from a young author, but with a maturity of voice suggesting a master playwright or screenwriter."
- Peter Birkemoe, Quill & Quire
"Willumsen's fantasy involves two tourists, Spyda and Lynxa, who explore an island that turns into a futuristic city or an apocalyptic nightmare depending on what drugs they’re taking."
- Heidi MacDonald, The Comics Beat
"Willumsen's book demands that you spend time looking at it from multiple angles, then trusts you to make up your own mind."
- Ryan Carey, Daily Grindhouse
"Anti-Gone is likely one of the strongest long-form formalist comics published this year. Willumsen's pages made me gasp, and flinch, and read and re-read, and re-read."
- Alex Hoffman, Sequential State
"Book of the year for me, and probably an absolute game-changer for a generation of cartoonists about to emerge"
- Brian Nicholson, Are Comics Even Good
Blu Ray Cover
for Riley Stearns
2014 film
Poster & Blu Ray Cover
for Masashi Yamamotos
1987 film
Poster & Blu Ray Cover
for Masashi Yamamotos
1990 film
Illustration and Packaging Design in Collaboration with Art Director Eric Skillman
"Bill Gates, at Odds With Trump on Virus, Becomes a Right-Wing Target"
By Daisuke Wakabayashi, Davey Alba and Marc Tracy
Art Directed by Molly Bedford
Cinema1999 is a 35mm film screening series produced and conceived by Adam Abouaccar and presented at Bar Le Ritz in Montreal, QC. For each screening I prodcued a limited edition silk screen print.
Illustration and Packaging Design in Collaboration with Art Director Eric Skillman
In 2023 I collaborated with Theo Triantafyllidis on concepts for his videogame project "Feral Metaverse". The game debuted at Galerie Nagel Draxler, Berlin, where my original concept drawings were on display
"Anti-Gone is a new mixed reality performance by inspired the comic book of the same name by Connor Willumsen. Anti-Gone incorporates live performance with real time simulation to explore the social impacts of technology, privilege and the beginnings and ends of worlds."
In the midst of uncertainty, Anti-Gone is offering a soothing experience with a critical view on the privilege of escape.
More Info:
http://slimetech.org/anti-gone/
Credits
Director: Theo Triantafyllidis
Writer: Connor Willumsen
Production Manager: Polina Miliou
Key Collaborator: Matthew Doyle
Performance Team
Cast: Lindsey Normington, Zana Gankhuyag, Matthew Doyle, Sam Congdon
Composer and Live Music Performance: Cameron Stallones
Sound: Jeffrey Alan Scudder
Game Engine Performer: Theo Triantafyllidis
Motion Capture and Movement Coach: Rachel Ho
Game Engine Team
Lead Artist: Theo Triantafylldis
Lead Programmer: Stalgia Grigg
Lead 3D Character Designer: Joseph Melhuish
3D Artists: Sara Drake, Ryan Decker, Siyao Zheng
Commissioned and Produced by Onassis Culture
Motion Capture technology provided by Noitom MoCap.
Special thanks to:
Sundance New Frontier
The Breeder Gallery
Meredith Rosen Gallery
Human Resources Los Angeles
UCLA Design Media Arts
"As part of Parallel Lines, Connor Willumsen’s project consists of live portrait sessions over video chat with other home-ridden individuals from around the world. His drawings are made simply and directly, allowing him to only draw what he can see on screen. Bizarre glitches, visual artifacts, and low resolutions are incorporated into the drawing process, resulting in a somewhat deformed but accurate depiction of a video chat."
In collaboration with other artists and writers, this is a video in which each produces a short segment. Mine is a collection of free-form digital drawings rendered with out of date early 3D sofrware over decomposed sound effects.
"Racists Are Recruiting. Watch Your White Sons."
by Joanna Schroeder
Art Directed by Nathan Huang
Film by Harrison Atkins
"The Deletion Prompts."
Fiction by David Means
Art Directed by Rina Kushner
Blu Ray Cover
for George Kaczender's
1969 film
"One Year Under Taliban Rule"
Portraits for Sunday Opinion
Art Directed by Damien Saatdjian
Art Directed by Steph Davidson
Written by Zack Soto
Art Directed by Marc Weidenbaum