Marcel Dzama: Who Loves the Sun

David Zwirner is pleased to present Who Loves the Sun, an exhibition of new work by Marcel Dzama (b. 1974), on view at the gallery’s 34 East 69th Street location in New York. This will be the artist’s eleventh solo exhibition at David Zwirner since joining the gallery in 1998, and his first solo presentation in New York since 2014. The exhibition coincides with the opening of a major survey of the artist’s work at the Sara Hildén Art Museum, Tampere, Finland.

Dzama created this new group of drawings in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, a time in which the artist and much of the rest of the world were social distancing and in quarantine. A sense of hope pervades these new works. Several of the drawings feature beaming anthropomorphized suns and moons above groups of reveling masked dancers. As Dzama notes, “I find the fear, anxiety, and sadness from the virus has changed my art. It has focused it in a more hopeful and positive direction. I find when things are more easygoing, I get a little more cynical and world-weary, but when things are down, I find myself being more hopeful and positive in my work.”¹

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¹ Marcel Dzama, quoted in Barry Samaha, “State of the Art Industry in the Time of Coronavirus,” Harper’s Bazaar (May 7, 2020), accessed online.

Image: Marcel Dzama, Who loves the sun, 2020-2021 (detail)