By Francisco Benitez
The characters and circumstances that unfold throughout Daniel Berman's graphic proposal establish themselves in direct contrast to conventional behavior, emanating an aesthetic that harkens back to the panels of underground graphic novels. Stemming from contradictory or incongruous situations, each piece appears to be part of a specific narrative, one that has been fragmented and within whose complexity the event of nonsense, extravagance, or ambiguities can be experienced. Berman uses the human condition as the plausible stage for absurdity. The staging is imbued with the absurd, the element that intrudes. This can be well adapted to the context of the present, to this habitual way of living, where the ways of acting in contemporary society change before they can solidify, and where we can do nothing to stop the liquid flow of them(1). It is from the same artifice of absurdity that humor ceases to be the opposite of tragedy; rather, as Simon Critchlet suggests, it is a direct approach to the depth of tragedy, and thus, from the apparent superficiality of the circumstance, the consequences become more interesting than the joke itself(2). The value of the proposal lies in the generation of multiple questions: its narrative property and its relationship with the everyday, the transgression of logic and the activation of thought, the entropy of humor, and social impostures. It is important to remember that humor (in this case, dark humor) has a dignity that sets it apart from mere mockery and a character - untamed - of emancipation and elevation(3).
Opmerkingen