This gallery of surreal images by Billout (Number 24) does not follow any narrative. Instead, each high-definition graphic presents an independent scene from nature or a sharp architectural rendering in which "something's not quite right." A page labeled "Dune" pictures a smooth white mountain against a blue sky; a person in robes climbs one side, suggesting desert sand, while a figure in a parka climbs the other, suggesting drifted snow. In "Secession," Billout neatly bisects all the bridges that cross the Seine River, allowing Paris's Ile de la Cité to float free; in "Skyscraper," he pictures a pointy steeple scratching a blue line across the face of the full moon. New York's Flatiron Building features in two panels, forcing its way through a snowy crust ("Ice Age") and poised on the brink of a sand-colored abyss where Broadway and Fifth Avenue used to intersect ("Canyon"). Billout's dark humor comes through in images like "Probabilities," which pictures a zebra whose stripes form a bull's-eye pattern and, in the foreground, the silhouette of a hunter and a rifle's barrel; he has a more whimsical touch in "Attack," which pictures a military general's statue, a solitary pedestrian recoiling in shock, and a snowball which seems to have come out of nowhere. Billout illustrates for the Atlantic Monthly, and it is easy to imagine these puzzling stand-alone images as magazine covers; admirers of Magritte or Istvan Banyai will want to take a look. All ages.
(Dec.)
