<3 
                             

“Heart” is an issue devoted to the romantic and the erotic, in the most daring, vulnerable, silly, sexy, devastating and insane forms it could take. What would be truly AUDACIOUS? Maybe it’s Chloe Rees’ pornographic penciled palimpsests FUCK and SUCK, Tamar Bresge’s minimal drawings of Georges Bataille’s erotic classic Story of the Eye; scenes of urine leaking from closets and priest’s eyeballs peeking out of vaginas. Charlie Stuip’s Matador shares a similar economy of audacity, bludgeoning, wrist-kissing and popping Molly. 

What would be truly DARLING? Simone Kyle’s pink and yellow color fields and their accompanying haiku memorialize the sweetness of a romance past. Adam Judah Krasnoff writes of Love in Chelsea, “late-late-spring’s misty palm”. Isabelle Cordero’s lovingest pornographicest line drawings feature emoji faces jubilant with mutual
affection. 

And talk about graphic… the <3 as typographic representation informs the visual consideration of signifiers used to represent love. Take for example Jill Yum’s Notes on Red Heart Emoji, Elena Campos’ Text Art Hearts or Ela Kazdal’s cross-stitched romantic video game Okul Güzeli. Audacious, darling and graphic do not even begin to describe the innermost wettest depths of the <3 issue. It goes deep. Soooooooo deeeep.

Fiona Jacobson-Yang, Ivy Lockhart, Avery Westhagen and Lola Butan