Doktor Karayom's First Book: The Stuff of Grade School Nightmares
This book is like grade school if it were a crime scene.
(SPOT.ph) The artist Dr. Karayom may be the last person you’d expect to come up with a book about our grade school memories but here it is. The local art world’s virtuoso of gore, the guy who’s built quite a remarkable body of work founded largely on blood-red paint and macabre ideas, just released a hardcover called Grade 3. It is published by Istorya Studios Inc., which is run by fellow artists Rodel Tapaya and Marina Cruz.
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Doktor Karayom's first book: What to know
Grade 3 is 200 plus pages of Dr. Karayom images that may take a bit of time to scrub off your head: a mother who finds surprising comfort in peeling the skin off her son; a boy with pencils sticking out of his bloodied scalp as if forming a Jesus crown; a kid who sets fire to himself after finding out the “exchange gift” present he got was a box of matches. This book is like grade school if it were a crime scene.
The images are not mere floating artworks on paper. They form part of 23 little komiks-style stories told not only with absurd humor and subversive joy by the author and artist—whose name is Russel Trinidad in real life—but also affection and even hints of poignancy. The boy who ends up with the box of posporo wakes up from his flash of a dream and stops himself from setting fire to his classmates, realizing the gifter might be too broke to afford anything more. “Sino ba naman ako para mag mataas…” the giftee asks. And of the skin-peeling? It’s the kid’s way of offering solace to his mother who’d just been abandoned by his dad. Do these heartwarming endings make the book safe for kids? We'll have parents be the judge of that.
Each story here may sound familiar or ordinary in the beginning. Some of them start really innocently but they don’t stay that way for long. In this most unusual trip down memory lane, as the back cover text says, “Ang pamilyar ay magiging magara, nakakamangha ngunit nakakabahala.” Readers may look at Grade 3 as a little collection of comic strips from the Thirteen Artists Awardee Doktor Karayom, but it’s also in its way a piece of art (worth P1500 a copy)—from the guy who’s always challenged us to confront the horrors of everyday, because often looking away is just that more dangerous.
Grade 3 is published under the Tagpo Story Collection of Istorya Studios Inc. It will be launched at Art Fair Philippines this February 16 to 18 at The Link, Ayala Center, Makati City. Other books under Tagpo are Rodel Tapaya’s Bayan Ng Ginhaw: Ang Pabrika Ng Mga Maskara, Marina Cruz’s Sandaang Damit, and Mga Walang Pangalan Pero Andyan by Archie Oclos.
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