What unfolds is a plotless opera that is, in every sense of the
word, hysterical.
*The Improbable*
Richard Kraft and Danielle Dutton’s Here Comes Kitty, a collage
project (Kraft’s) with written interludes (Dutton’s), beautifully,
wantonly, defies review. Like a dream, it slips off the binds of
the mind, building up structures which differ from those present
upon rational waking. The images it combines are unlikely bedmates.
What it says, if it says anything, it says without concepts. It
channels disparate locations and histories into singular,
pressurized, visible forms.
*Numero Cinq*
Kraft’s book is duly dreamlike and mystical, excerpting text and
imagery from biblical stories, Hindu iconography, found photos and
children’s primers, and collapsing them all into palimpsestic
visions and portmanteau people. The raucous paper opera is
regularly “interrupted” with prose poem entr’actes by Danielle
Dutton, before returning to its elaborate system of motifs and
patterns, pitting sense against nonsense in a way that’s both
cosmic and buoyantly childlike.
*Toronto Globe & Mail*
Kraft took the Cold War comic book Kapitan Kloss, about a Polish
spy trying to infiltrate Nazi Germany, and superimposes a plethora
of wry, humorous, erotic images on top of it. His pool of resources
was wide: images cut from Amar Chitra Katha comics of Hindu
mythology can be found next to clips from underground porn comic
Cherry. The result is a densely layered visual cacophony with a
multiplicity of characters and influences. Despite hinging on the
absurd it remains engrossing and visually captivating. The dense
visuals are interspersed with 16 text sections written by author
Danielle Dutton. They are similar nonsensical, pastiche. A stream
of consciousness that echoes the creative visuals.
*Flavorpill*
Richard Kraft’s Here Comes Kitty: A Comic Opera explodes off the
page. Kraft, a multidisciplinary artist, pastes images of Hindu
gods next to exercise diagrams and drawings of monkeys and
elephants into bars and restaurants — all superimposed on a
pre-existing 1960s Cold War–era comic. Equally bizarre and
juxtaposed fragments of text, composed by Danielle Dutton,
accompany the images. The effect is seductive.
*Hyperallergic*
Soon we feel that even Kraft’s interruptions are gathering
narrative force: again and again that rabbit, the goddesses’ hands.
Yet as one page compels us to the next, each simultaneously becomes
a universe of its own. Subverting becomes telling, bombs become
themes, and narrative turns itself sideways, upside-down.
*BOMB Magazine*
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