Nothing Is a Cure

Jeff Horwat's wordless graphic narrative immerses readers in a surreal world of labyrinthine perplexities. Driven by personal anguish, the protagonist (whom the author has named Charlie) explores a disorienting checker-board terrain that is strewn with bones even as vines and flowers burst through the cracks. Charlie encounters a series of beings and objects-birds, a broken teacup, flower pots, a tree-that speak symbolically to his existential emptiness. On his path to recovery, he is misled, attacked, and left in awe by various wind-up animals who complicate his search for answers.As Horwat describes in the afterword, NOTHING IS A CURE reflects his experiences and struggles. In the midst of intense anxiety, Horwat turned to art-making to explore his own existential crisis. Informed by Buddhist meditation techniques and the psychological insights of Jacques Lacan, he began to see how the objects from his memories might resonate symbolically. Images that he had created as stand-alone revelations from his recovery process began to coalesce into a dynamic symbolic world. The resulting ink wash paintings would eventually be exhibited in a gallery. Although the black-and-white images were not originally intended to form a linear narrative, once they were on the gallery walls, Horwat noticed connections between them and was inspired to fill in the gaps to create a story.Horwat achieves a vision that is at once poignantly idiosyncratic and widely appealing, a story about the discovery of inner solace within the emptiness of experience. Through the protagonist's encounters with symbolic objects, NOTHING IS A CURE presents the paradoxical realization that the acceptance of loss can open us to a vast otherness that fills us with life and wonder.