January 5 - 31, 2008
Trio Magnus: Equally Superior
“With flashing eyes, gnashing teeth, and pointy pens, we, the three members of TRIO MAGNUS, let ’er rip. Sketchbook pages quickly fill with stream of consciousness semi-nonsense. We are frenzied doodle gurus. We are stupidly brilliant. Separately we are nothing. Together we are equally superior!”
Thus begins the appropriately spastic introduction to this stunning debut project from Toronto-based illustration collective, TRIO MAGNUS. A phantasmagoria of funny, feverish and downright bizarre imagery taken directly from the sketchbooks of collective members Clayton Hanmer, Aaron Leighton and Steve Wilson, the book revels in visual excess and celebrates the role of the subconscious in the art-making process. Throughout the course of many beer-soaked sketch-a-thons, these award-winning illustrators have created a strange, occasionally dirty and entirely original world where a monster sits down with a girl for a slice of cake, skeletons erupt out of volcanos and massive robotic constructions offer helpful platitudes.
The title, “Equally Superior”, is suggestive not only of the silliness which permeates the book. It is also reflective of the TRIO MAGNUS members’ mutual admiration of each other’s work and their assertion that by combining their visual powers they can, in their words, create a “nuclear explosion of disturbing, doodly magic” and have a hell of a good time along the way.
TRIO MAGNUS launched "Equally Superior" at Design Festa in Tokyo, Japan, on November 17 – 18, 2007; in Toronto at Interaccess Electronic Media Arts Centre on December 14, 2007; and in Calgary at Uppercase Gallery on January 5, 2008.