Eclectic and fantastic: the unique artistic world of the Canadian artist
Marcel Dzama first gained fame with his drawings, but has recently expanded his practice to encompass film and three-dimensional work, developing an immediately recognizable language that draws from a diverse range of references and influences, including Dada and Marcel Duchamp. Created in close collaboration with the artist, this publication includes work from his 2013 exhibition at David Zwirner in London, which featured three videos inspired by the game of chess; puppets and masks based on the characters; and drawings, collages, dioramas, paintings and sculptural works. Dzama utilized the architecture of the gallery itself--an eighteenth-century Georgian townhouse--by hanging puppets from a skylight above the five-story building’s central spiral staircase and placing monitors in the windows so videos were viewed from the street. Among the drawings included is the large-scale, four-part Myth, Manifestos and Monsters, in which characters from the films line up alongside figures from the artist’s earlier repertoire. Other drawings, such as two large-scale works executed on piano scroll, depict the characters in poses that mirror their movements and dancing in the films, while a series of new collages feature this imagery in more unexpected contexts. Five small paintings depicting a lone female terrorist seated on a bed emphasize the underlying tension between reality and fiction that characterizes all of the works gathered here.
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Monday, July 20 - Friday, July 21, visit David Zwirner Books' sixth annual pop-up bookstore! Drop by the 525 West 19th Street gallery for special offers on titles from David Zwirner Books and other publishers, along with signed catalogues, posters, tote bags and more. continue to blog
Marcel Dzama's 2012 work on paper, "As innocent as grace itself," is reproduced from Hatje Cantz's substantial new monograph on the artist, Puppets, Pawns, and Prophets, which accompanied a show at David Zwirner, London. Deborah Solomon writes, "Dzama, it might be said, has always been a poet of conclaves, of invented worlds governed by their own rules and codes of behavior. He is best-known for pristine ink and- wash drawings that have the chaste, innocent aura of storybook illustrations but attest to the sad and abusive undersides of societies and institutions. In his alternate universes, individuals are often made to endure the bruising authority of an unnamed state. His early work, with its profusion of khaki greens, beiges, and browns, deployed what might be called a military palette—the muted, muddy colors of uniforms and boots. It was a fitting camouflage for a world that at times resembled nothing so much as an internment camp. The startling fact is that Dzama’s new work… has shed some of its former menace and taken a turn for the cheerful. The mood is festive and carnivalesque and his palette has grown lush with luxuriant reds and blues. There are fewer flying bats. (I counted only three.) So too, there are fewer rifle-toting thugs, perhaps because gun violence in America has escalated to unbearable proportions and become a subject better tackled by the U.S. Congress and new legislation than by the reverie of art." continue to blog
FORMAT: Hbk, 9 x 11 in. / 184 pgs / 154 color. LIST PRICE: U.S. $24.95 LIST PRICE: CANADA $34.95 ISBN: 9783775737326 PUBLISHER: Hatje Cantz/David Zwirner AVAILABLE: 10/31/2013 DISTRIBUTION: D.A.P. RETAILER DISC: TRADE PUBLISHING STATUS: Active AVAILABILITY: In stock TERRITORY: NA LA
Published by Hatje Cantz/David Zwirner. Text by Deborah Solomon.
Eclectic and fantastic: the unique artistic world of the Canadian artist
Marcel Dzama first gained fame with his drawings, but has recently expanded his practice to encompass film and three-dimensional work, developing an immediately recognizable language that draws from a diverse range of references and influences, including Dada and Marcel Duchamp. Created in close collaboration with the artist, this publication includes work from his 2013 exhibition at David Zwirner in London, which featured three videos inspired by the game of chess; puppets and masks based on the characters; and drawings, collages, dioramas, paintings and sculptural works. Dzama utilized the architecture of the gallery itself--an eighteenth-century Georgian townhouse--by hanging puppets from a skylight above the five-story building’s central spiral staircase and placing monitors in the windows so videos were viewed from the street. Among the drawings included is the large-scale, four-part Myth, Manifestos and Monsters, in which characters from the films line up alongside figures from the artist’s earlier repertoire. Other drawings, such as two large-scale works executed on piano scroll, depict the characters in poses that mirror their movements and dancing in the films, while a series of new collages feature this imagery in more unexpected contexts. Five small paintings depicting a lone female terrorist seated on a bed emphasize the underlying tension between reality and fiction that characterizes all of the works gathered here.
