Yûichi Yokoyama / Esquisses radicales du néo-manga

Now considered a genius of comics, Yûichi Yokoyama has dedicated himself exclusively to neo-manga, a style that can be understood as a radical graphic inquiry allowing him to “draw time.” Discovered in the 2000s through a series of iconoclastic books in which drawing stretches narrative, this discreet author focuses on depicting micro-events—a train journey, the progress of explorers through a land emptied of presence. Transcending the popular genre of comics, Yokoyama creates timeless narratives at the edge of abstraction. The strange meets the uncanny, and the critique of a mechanised world becomes an ode to life. Regularly exhibited in major Japanese and Anglo-Saxon museums, as well as at the Palais de Tokyo (2018), his works closed the major exhibition “Comics, 1964–2024” presented this year at the Centre Pompidou.

Following that exhibition, Galerie 8+4, in partnership with Éditions Matière, is honoured to present an extensive selection of Yokoyama’s preparatory drawings. His restrained line acquires an even more striking energy in these graphic trials, carried out on a variety of supports (wrapping paper, drafts, advertisements), where he plays with printed characters to refine his compositions and storyboards. Occasionally enhanced with colour or collage, these pencil drawings crystallise in a single form both the pop effervescence of contemporary culture and the singular vision of an artist seeking purity and reduction in his narratives.

Éditions Matière stands out for its radical approach to comics, regularly publishing authors who challenge the very idea of storytelling. Adventurers of composition and line, its artists explore the little-known yet fertile territories linking comics to contemporary art, architecture and graphic design.

To date, Éditions Matière has published ten books by Yûichi Yokoyama.
Yûichi Yokoyama lives and works in Yokohama.