Under the title "Fractal Dog", the Zurich filmmaker and scribbler Lawrence Grimm is presenting his cartoons in the Bistro Alte Kaserne. They are chaotic stories with a background.

Lawrence Grimm, born 1978 in Zurich, is actually an expert on screenplay, directing and editing – at least that’s what he studied at the Zurich University of the Arts, and he has also received some notable awards for his short films. However, Grimm is also a passionate scribbler, whereby this description is not at all meant in a negative way. He simply doesn’t ignore any piece of paper to tell a little story. A veritable collection of hundreds of cartoons has emerged – “Teatime for a Universe”.

The return of the same: Under the title “Fractal Dog” you can now gaze at a small selection from this collection. If you wish, you can also try to understand the scribbles instead of gazing at them, but first you must recall some physics. However, with Grimm that’s quite amusing, as like a real physicist he makes use of an animal metaphor – an experimental mnemonic. What a cat was for Erwin Schrödinger, is a dog for Grimm. To be exact, a tousled schnauzer, whose snout is in the form of a schnauzer that has a schnauzer as a snout, shows what fractality means. Exactly this: the eternal recurrence of the same pattern within a system from tousled to chaotic. That’s clear, isn’t it?
Whereupon the schnauzer gets off lightly unlike the thinker, who gets to feel the consequences of his fantasy of the black hole on his own body. And that’s how cleverly it proceeds in the 37 scribbles exhibited. A turtle rebels against the prejudice that its own species moves slowly and it even gets a little uncanny when you think about the sentence ”It’s a small world“ together with a leviathan.

Robot loves worms: Besides the dog, a weird and whimsical population inhabits the “Universe” of the artist. You can find figures from everyday life as well as robots, who collect leftover worms. Grimm presents us with the inimitable absurdity of our daily routine, the everyday chaos, in which we keep on lying to ourselves that everything is in order and we have this order completely under control.
Grimm’s delight in the paradoxical relationship between chaos and order produces some fantastic effects. Butterflies flee from the butterfly-effect of the chaos theory, a meditative brain dissolves within its loops and suddenly there’s this pattern again, which gives us an insight in the midst of chaos.
Formally, the scribbles are reduced to the maximum. Yet they’re not just scribbled on paper. Everywhere you can see whiteout tape corrections, which show the painstaking effort the artist has made to achieve accuracy. The cartoons are almost scientific illustrations with their ability to show the point (of no return) of the theme chaos and order.

• March 13, 2012, Caroline Lommaert Blog
• By Caroline Lommaert | Blogpost about a visit to the Strapazin-Atelier

The 24th of March will mark the kick-off of the 20th Fumetto Festival in Lucerne. Behind the mysterious name hides an internationally renowned cartoon festival, turning Lucerne into comic geek heaven.

Now, I personally never understood the hype around comics, apart from reading the occasional ‘Donald Duck’ or ‘Tintin’ as a kid, so you may wonder how I know about this festival. Well… last week one of my boyfriend’s colleagues, Lawrence Grimm, invited me to discover another part of his world. At kooaba he is responsible for the creative concepts behind the promotional videos, but when night falls, and he dons his mask and cape… he betters the world, one witty drawing at a time. Having met him only briefly a couple of times at the kooaba office, I was more than positively surprised to see what happens during “Teatime for a Universe”: where out-of-this-world creatures twist and turn in fantastical environments whilst making the most clever statements. Check out the link (=this page) to peek into Grimm’s wondrous universe!

It seems, though, that the inspiration for comical creatures rubs off on all of the artists present in the cavern that is edition moderne. (Excuse my lame attempt at the Batman reference, because this place deserves a lot more credit.) The buzzing Strapazin Atelier is home to publishing house Edition Moderne, which publishes the bigger names on the Swiss Cartoon landscape and also translates and publishes the more important French comics. Some of the artists present during my visit are contributors to the quarterly comic magazine Strapazin.

For the comic book rookies like me, I highly recommend the new graphic novel by Kati Rickenbach, Jetzt kommt Später, which I started reading during my visit and had trouble putting down. This autobiographical work is a great introduction to the world of grown-up comics, because I happily learned that they are definitely not just for nerdy kids!

But more than discovering the diverse world of comics, I discovered a wonderful place of creativity. As I entered the atelier I immediately sensed a feeling of warmth. Lawrence introduced me to his fellow artists and I joined them at their lunch table, where we discussed art and politics as if I were part of their group. A delicious lunch was served up and before I knew it, a quick foosball game allowed for a bit of fun and games before getting back to work, pen in hand and headphones on. Although Lawrence is not actually a contributor to Strapazin, he comes to this atelier to work and I understand why – the creativity rubs off! Surrounded by hundreds of books (not just comics), each person in this large space can sink into their private workload or have a little chat with their neighbour. It is all very easy-going, and I think this is what lets each personality unfold. It for sure has gotten me thinking to find a desk in a similar atelier…
I would like to thank the whole Edition Moderne atelier for a wonderful insight into their magical cartoon world!

If you want to know what an Elefly looks like, you must make a pilgrimage to 10 Dienerstrasse. Here you’ll find the poetic little animal in a drawing by Lawrence Grimm. Together with other “scribbles” – that’s what the creator calls them – the weird siblings Elefly and Flyofant are hanging on the wall of the newly opened ”Galerie Burger Salzmann”. One exhibition after the other is opening in Zurich’s district 4 at the moment, but that seemed inspiring rather than off-putting to Meret Burger and her partner Erik Wirz Salzmann. You can see the work of young artists on the ground floor of their film production company 4-Films from now on. Meret Burger did the networking during her training at art school. She also knows Lawrence Grimm, who is opening the gallery with his cartoon collection “Teatime for a Universe”, because she attended the film class together with him at the Zurich University of the Arts. While she specialized in production, Grimm wrote screenplays and shot short films. Besides that, he still keeps on working at the filmpodium (arts cinema).
He started scribbling during his schooldays. For a couple of years now he’s been archiving his drawings, thoughts and script ideas in small sketch books. They also determine the format of the now exhibited picture stories. Bizarre figures populate Grimm’s universe. Besides the Elefly, there’s also Francine the Frog, hoping the spell will be broken, two shy pillows, who become observers in unobserved moments, or Gerry, the amorous fir cone pangolin.
Grimm’s humour reminds us of his archetypes Gary Larson, F.K. Wächter and Mordillo, however, in the graphic translation they are as exact as scientific studies. Playfulness and exactness mark his cartoon drawings as well as his short films and screenplays, for which he has received numerous awards. In Zurich he’s best known for “S’Nöchschtmol” (Next Time), with which he won the first prize at the Youth Film Days 2003 as well as the Pink Apple Award. Or also the award-winning “Aschenbrüder” (Brothers of Ashes), for which he co-wrote the screenplay. At the moment Lawrence Grimm is working on a synopsis for a longer film and is hoping to find funding. But even then, he’ll never be able to stop scribbling.