Charles Burns Exhibition at Galerie Martel in Paris

Galerie Martel in Paris, open only a year and a half, has hosted exhibitions of major comic artists including Robert Crumb, Tomi Ungerer, Roland Topor, Art Spiegelman, and Milton Glaser. Directed by Rina Zavagli, wife of renowned illustrator Lorenzo Mattoti, the gallery recently celebrated American artist Charles Burns. Born in 1955, Burns is a key figure in the graphic novel movement. He began as an illustrator for Time, Rolling Stone, and The New Yorker. After meeting Art Spiegelman, founder of RAW, he turned to comics and created the character El Borbah. His work draws on 1960s culture, evoking Rod Serling's The Twilight Zone. Burns gained fame in 1990 by designing the cover for Iggy Pop's album Brick by Brick. In 1992, he created sets for Mark Morris's Nutcracker at the Brooklyn Academy of Music's Next Wave Festival. His acclaimed series Black Hole won the Prix Essentiel at Angoulême in 2007, revisiting Warhol's before/after concept. The exhibition includes works from The Believer, a literary magazine founded by Dave Eggers for which Burns creates covers, and pages from his new album X'ed Out, which reimagines Hergé's Tintin and references Lucas Samaras's auto-polaroids. The show runs from November 17, 2010, to February 5, 2011.