MR. COLOSTOMY

MR. COLOSTOMY
MATTHEW THURBER
Are we not all criminals—eating our take-out, foraging for mushrooms, lapping at puddles? What happens when sleep becomes commodified? What if all the people at your local café were piloting drone strikes? What is the hidden cost and darkness of the society we must all engage with? Mr. Colostomy opens up cans of worms faster than they can restock the Goya on your bodega shelves. Who is Mr. Colostomy? Why, he’s a manifestation of a searching consciousness, a marginally employable horse detective who sleeps outside, standing up. As he attempts to unravel a ridiculous plot that follows the disappearance of a couple of brats who turn into atomic particles after sundown, Mr. Colostomy remains always alien, a mutant mustang, an eccentric equus who might just be trying to make a buck in Babytown, the Babylon built by babes—or, is a more sinister plot a-hoof? The surreal comedy of Mr. Colostomy is enhanced by Thurber’s process of creating the comic through parapraxis, meaning with no forethought or pencilling. This comic honours the mistake as the desired or hidden expression of the unconscious. All that matters is that the comic is funny or real or neither! All comics were created in a public space in order to “swim in” or “feel” the audience.
MATTHEW THURBER
Matthew Thurber is an artist and musician living in Brooklyn. He is the author of the graphic novels 1-800-MICE (2011) and Infomaniacs (2013). Thurber was the recipient of a NYFA fellowship in fiction in 2010 for 1-800-MICE, which The Paris Review called “the Gravity’s Rainbow–Sherlock Holmes–Professor Sutwell–Inspector Clouseau–Silent Spring of comics.” Ambergris, his ongoing multimedia performance project, has performed its “Anti-Matter Cabaret” since 2003 at venues such as Issue Project Room, the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, and the Fumetto Festival in Switzerland. His full-length play Mining the Moon was produced at the Brick Theater in July 2014. His artwork has been shown in galleries such as Southfirst and Knowmoregames in New York and Weird Things in Toronto.