BARC the dog Featured in Jersey City Times

The New Jersey Times features VillageOneArt collaborative artist BARC the dog (formerly known as Alexander Lansang), about how he uses a cartoon dog to create visual narratives.

BARC the dog is both Lansang’s creation and his transmutation: a grey-blue, razor-toothed, shield-nosed canine whose negotiation of the city provides this show its protagonist and most of its drama. Unlike other cartoonists who stand apart from their creations, it is never clear where Lansang ends and BARC begins. The show, notably, is credited to the dog, not the human, as if BARC has escaped the studio, and Lansang is desperately chasing his tail.

Lansang has filled a small square dais with tales of BARC, some in comic form, some compiled and bound into prose books, some elaborated with near-scientific precision, some conceived, quite clearly, while zonked. It’s here where we get our best look at other inhabitants of the BARCverse, including CRAB (BARC spelled backward, as the astute will surely notice), who might be an adversary, or a God, or just a pain in the ass. There are also hints of a Crab Conspiracy that you’re invited to unravel, pick at, laugh at, or obsess over. One book contains photographs of Lansang’s friends, or maybe BARC’s, in costume as their avatars, combatants in a private battle-game that you’re certainly invited to join, if you’re mad enough — a game that may resemble your life.