by RUPERT BOTTENBERG

"There's living art," says Pakito Bolino, "and dead art." Skulls, gore, medical horror and violence may be luridly prominent in the work of Le Dernier Cri, the French publishing house/art collective of which Bolino and Caroline Sury are the founders. There's no question, though, that life - ferocious, vibrant, chaotic life - seems to pulse through every drop of ink they lay down.

Originally from Paris but now based in Marseilles, Bolino and Sury run a silkscreening studio from which they've produced, through painstaking handmade effort, a decade's worth of books, comics, monographs, print-medium objets d'art and their flagship magazine Hopital Brut. Oh, and some wild films, too, short barrages of mindbending ocular mayhem assembled by an entire gang of artists. Le Dernier Cri, after all, isn't just Bolino and Sury, it's a spectrum of edgy talent from Europe, Japan, the States and right here.

Montreal, in fact, was in a way the birthplace of Le Dernier Cri. In 1990, Bolino fled his demons in Paris, finding sanctuary of sorts with Montreal cartoonist and silkscreener Valium. "We can say that it's thanks to Montreal that we've done Le Dernier Cri, thanks to Valium and his silkscreening studio," says Bolino - so it's appropriate that they salute a decade of derangement, with the show DC10/Vomir des yeux, here in the 514.

"We'll present a selection of the books we've done, animated films we've done and most importantly our latest film. It's called Les religions sauvages, it's two hours long and it was done by 30 artists from around the world.

"Our main aim is to help expose artists from the margins, whether they're in contemporary art or comics." Le Dernier Cri is out to destroy the artificial, academic barriers between purported "fine" art, pop art like comix and what's called l'art brut, or outsider art. That third category is the domain of compulsive schizophrenics and backwoods weirdoes, folks that Le Dernier Cri has a history of integrating into the collective's assembly of insanity.

"It's something more visceral, art made by people who aren't part of normal artistic culture. They're not aware that they're doing art. They're doing it above all for themselves. That's why the work of certain marginal artists, like the comics of Valium, are rather close to l'art brut, their way of filling up a piece of paper is close to automatic drawing."

Vernissage and world premiere of Les religions sauvages at Galerie Clark (5455 de Gaspé, #114) tonight, Thursday, Oct. 14, 8 p.m. DC10/Vomir des yeux runs to Nov. 20