Mark Batty Publisher

New York, NY – March 10, 2011 – In the works for years, the greatly anticipated LE GUN 1,2,3– a stunning oversized volume of the cult magazine’s first three issues – will hit shelves in April. Called a “forum for experimentation” and compared to forerunners Raw, Bazooka, L’Assiette au beurre, and Archigram by Eye Magazine, this tome features a riotous range of artwork from the members of the LE GUN collective, an amazingly talented motley crew of international artists, designers, and writers.

With 400 pages of comics, collages, drawings, puns, paintings, journal entries, quotations, and illustrated stories that defy tidy categories the outsized LE GUN 1,2,3 is a collector’s dream. Every arresting page is filled with narrative-driven artwork that artist/designer Andrzej Klimowski calls “pictorial poems.” Flipping through it, readers move at breakneck speeds through scenes and fragments as varied as a cowboy’s diary found in the belly of an ancient alligator, a rumination on the best tits in Europe, the account of a man who gives up breathing only to find air coming in through his hair follicles, and many more stories that can’t be tied down with words.

Deftly combining low-brow humor and irreverence with arcane references and homages to the likes of Baudelaire and Max Ernst, the wildly imaginative work showcased in LE GUN 1,2,3 is sometimes shocking and subversive, sometimes haunting and moving, and always intricately detailed, personal, surreal, and honest. The members of the collective live and work by Andre Breton’s words that preface LE GUN 2: “The man who can’t visualize a horse galloping on a tomato is an idiot.”

LE GUN 1,2,3 is an art collective established by graduates from London’s Royal College of Art’s Department of Communication Art and Design. Since the 2004 inception of LE GUN, the group’s core – Neal Fox, Matthew Appleton, Bill Bragg, Chris Bianchi, Alex Wright, and Robert Greene – has produced five issues of the publication. They have initiated countless projects in Europe, including installations, shows, and design work, garnering attention from media outlets like Eye and i-D.

Mark Batty Publisher is an independent publisher dedicated to making distinctive books on the visual art of communicating, showcasing the visual power and innovation of contemporary culture in all of its varied poses. Today, the visual comes at us from more places than ever, and its dissemination is faster and more advanced every year. Books from Mark Batty Publisher capture this acceleration on the pages of every book. Affordable, well designed, thoughtfully created, and produced to last, MBP books are artful products that readers want to hold onto forever.

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LE GUN 1,2,3
LE GUN
Pub Date: April 2011
Page Count: 400
Size: 10 x 13.75 inches
Format: Casebound
Price: $120
ISBN: 978-0-9817805-0-4

For a review copy, more information, or to schedule an interview with the author, contact Kate Abbey-Lambertz at +1 718 834 8000 or media@markbattypublisher.com.

LE GUN’s exhibition Close Eyes to Exit opens tonight at the Red Gallery in London. It’s the launch of LE GUN 5. Their BAREBONES issue six comes out as well. There’s a party with Rough Trade on April 8. Another show at Bourouina Gallery in Berlin at the end of April. Pretty sure these guys never sleep.

If (unlike me) you were lucky enough to be invited to the private opening, or will be in London while the exhibit is up (through April 18), you can walk into the Unknown Room.

Pretty awesome. The room is supposed to show life-size drawings of the bizarre based on the contents of George Melly’s briefcase. Honestly, I had no idea who that was, but anyone with an obit like this  is alright with me:

“George Melly, the jazz singer, author and raconteur who died yesterday aged 80, leched, drank and blasphemed his way around the clubs and pubs of the British Isles and provided pleasure to the public for five decades.” (The Telegraph)

And if you prefer to enjoy the LE GUN collective in the comfort of your own home, MBP has done you the favor of putting out  LE GUN 1,2,3, the large ‘n’ lovely collector’s edition of the first three out-of-print issues of LE GUN magazine. Not as big as a whole room, but bigger than a bread box or a laptop.

This looks serious

Apologies for any inconvenience, but yesterday we had a site outage caused by a nuclear (pronounced “new kew lar”) explosion at our webhosting company. The men in T-shirts and cargo pants have fixed the damage (multiple hard-drive failures, if that interests you) and the culprits have been exiled and their names stripped from the history books. Everything should be up and running normal now: if not, let us know! Use the site in-age to check out LE GUN 1,2,3, the prettiest big book you’ll see from us this week.

LE GUN is an art collective established by graduates from London’s Royal College of Art’s Department of Communication Art and Design that puts out an eponymous magazine. Since the 2004 inception of LE GUN, the group’s core–Neal Fox, Matthew Appleton, Bill Bragg, Chris Bianchi, Alex Wright, and Robert Greene–has produced four issues of the vibrant, over-sized publication, not to mention countless projects in London that have garnered attention from media outlets like Eye and i-D.

Small, scrappy, and dedicated to celebrating the work of illustrators from around the globe, the first three issues of LE GUN came and went, making an a big impact with a small print run and leaving people searching for copies to no avail. Since MBP appreciates small, scrappy, and dedicated, we are proud to rerelease the first three issues of LE GUN exactly as they first appeared, except now bound into an impressive single book. See what you’ve been missing. The LE GUN secret is secret no more!