Published by the small press Figure Bound earlier this year, A Most Exquisite Corpse’s slim cover hides a drawing that stretches over six feet wide when released from its accordion format. Each side of the drawing comprises fifteen five-inch segments that together form a life-size figure in profile. The whole reveals a protean, humanoid creature of graphite and ink and collage. This “corpse” is naked and clothed, hairy and tattooed, sore-kneed and hungry—it chomps a cigar on one side of its mouth while hiding a lollipop in the other cheek. 

A Most Exquisite Corpse inherited its look from the styles of thirty different artists, each solicited by Figure Bound’s founder, Samuel Alexander Forest, to contribute to the project. The New York City-based artist began designing and publishing printed media in 2024, including artist’s books of his own drawings and a close facsimile of multidisciplinary artist Kian McKeown’s 2018–2019 sketchbook. Seeking an opportunity to include more collaborators in the spirit of a group show, one method came to his mind for a new book project. The “exquisite corpse” approach originated from a parlor game played by a gang of French Surrealists about a hundred years ago. It goes like this: each participant adds to a composition, but they aren’t allowed to see the preceding participants’ contributions until the end. In a drawing and collage version, the game often involves rendering a body, so that contributors are blindly assigned its parts from head to toe.

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In keeping with the tradition, A Most Exquisite Corpse’s participating artists only knew what part of the body they were meant to draw when Samuel arrived at their studios with his long sheet of paper. For several hours, he would chat with the artists as they improvised the figure’s nose, belly, or foot into their allotted five-inch segments. While the assignments of parts mostly occurred in random sequence according to scheduling, some segments were specially prescribed to artists due to some corresponding aspect of their personality or practice. For example, artist Quinn Yanku took on the figure’s hair because of her background as a hair stylist, and her “cut” rises up from the figure’s skull in overlapping squiggles reminiscent of waves or flames. Megan Nugroho, who participated in a two-person show with Samuel at Tutu Gallery in 2023, incorporates the natural subject matter that frequently occurs in her work. She rendered the corpse’s left-hand fingers with her signature tendril-like growths wending out from pointy nails, where they form twigs and leaves, perhaps to attract the butterfly perched in profile on the upper thigh. “I've always loved doing exquisite corpses as a collaborative exercise. I think it's a playful way to sew disparate styles together and find connections where they might otherwise never exist,” she said about the project.

On the reverse side, Xingzi Gu inflects a punk personality to the face’s top half with pierced elfin ears, Mohawk spikes, and an orb-like eye shedding a single tear. Although the artist typically works with hazy oil and acrylics, their unique approach to figuration is still recognizable in their thin lines and careful shading. The book’s back cover lists the contributing artists “from head to toe,” but for those familiar with them, each segment’s strokes and motifs are distinct enough to call to mind their author.

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The format of this project had a two-fold purpose for Forest. On the one hand, the book object echoes its publisher’s own artistic practice, which is one that often uses drawing to three-dimensional ends—with paper and pencil, Samuel has made rocks, small volcanoes, a large sailboat, and even a life-sized replica of the couch Gillian Welch sat on for the cover image of her 2001 album Time (The Revelator). It follows that Figure Bound’s latest book is designed with a sculptural aspect: when drawn out of its cover, the drawing’s sheer size and double-sided element get closer to the illusion of a figure, close enough so that the unfolded whole could be displayed in a translucent casket for the book launch. On the other hand, the project demanded a journey. Samuel described the making of A Most Exquisite Corpse as a great excuse to visit the studios of his fellow artists, a special and regimented way to engage with his own community, which included what he describes as “a web of artist-run independent small publishing efforts.” That community and beyond were brought together for the launch, which took place on February 21, 2026, at the Church of the Heavenly Rest. Sitting in rows of pews, they followed a grief-informed meditation led by Jacklyn Hayes, listened to Samuel perform folk songs on his banjo, and joined in to sing together: yet more ways to turn the collaborative process into an active reason to gather. The presentation was titled “We Meet to Part” as a nod towards its funereal theme—there was a corpse on display and an all-black dress code, after all—along with the project’s occasion for joining distinct and disparate parts.

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“While working on Exquisite Corpse, Sam came to our studios to sit with us while we drew. There was a sense of handing the project, and control of it, over to us as contributors. At the book launch that same strange feeling was reversed. This time, as a contributor, I got to feel the same sense of surprise and wonder I imagine Sam felt as he watched us draw. It was a lovely and rare experience as an artist,” said Claire Merkle, who contributed the scintillant detail of the cigar.

A Most Exquisite Corpse is for sale on Figure Bound’s website and at Bungee Space and Printed Matter in New York City.