David Zwirner is pleased to present Child of Midnight, an exhibition of new works by Marcel Dzama, on view at the gallery’s London location.
As Dzama notes, “The exhibition, Child of Midnight, plays with the theme of an apocalypse of climate change. That we are counting down the time on The Doomsday Clock, at this hour of midnight, with very little time for our children to prevent certain doom. There is also a little travel escapism in there, although the flood has started. There are also references to alchemy … and the writings of [William] Blake and Dante. And the game of chess we are playing with Mother Nature.”
This is the artist’s twelfth solo exhibition at David Zwirner since joining the gallery in 1998, and his third at the London space following his 2013 exhibition Puppets, Pawns, and Prophets and his joint presentation with Raymond Pettibon, Let us compare mythologies, in 2016.
Image: Installation view, Marcel Dzama: Child of Midnight, David Zwirner, London, 2022
In the newest episode of our recently launched film series, Art+, Dzama takes you inside his Brooklyn studio for a conversation on drawing, dance, fatherhood, and more.
Dzama’s latest works expand on the tropical, oceanic, and celestial imagery that he has been exploring over the last several years in his practice. The costumed figures and animals dance around in lush, vibrantly colored settings underneath grinning moons and shimmering stars.
“I’ve been drawing and playing a lot with trickster gods in the last little while. I was thinking of the moon in control of some situation going down underneath it. He has control of everyone’s destiny. He’s watching his mad work unfold. Or maybe it’s me. It’s my representation. It’s the artist making this drawing.”
—Marcel Dzama
The new works were inspired by a range of sources, including the sixteenth-century Wunderzeichenbuch (Book of Miracles), the 1940s kitsch-inspired portraits by Francis Picabia, and John Milton’s epic poem Paradise Lost.
Anonymous, Folio 109, Plague of locusts in Poland, 1527, from Wunderzeichenbuch (Book of Miracles), c. 1552
Anonymous, Folio 109, Plague of locusts in Poland, 1527, from Wunderzeichenbuch (Book of Miracles), c. 1552
Francis Picabia, Portrait de Dorothy B., c. 1940. © 2022 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris
Francis Picabia, Portrait de Dorothy B., c. 1940. © 2022 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris
“A drawing can be slipped between the pages of a book or folded into an envelope…. It is, by definition, an intimate medium, and no living American artist uses it more expressively than Dzama.”
—Deborah Solomon, art critic
Many of the works show figures submerged within endless expanses of water. Rendered in rich blue tones, these waterscapes appear like scenes from a surreal aquatic ballet but their never-ending waterlines serve as a visual allegory for the continued effects of climate change.
Marcel Dzama in his Brooklyn studio, 2021. Photo: Jason Schmidt
Marcel Dzama in his Brooklyn studio, 2021. Photo: Jason Schmidt
More than just a metaphor for the artist, chess has been a longtime interest for Dzama, which has figured into works throughout his career and appears in several of the works that are on view. For instance, the exhibition debuts a new sculptural diorama that resembles an elaborate stage set populated by unique ceramic and wood chess pieces.
“Chess is basically a battle game, and for Dzama it is a metaphor for a battle that has an ever-lasting, self-repeating nature. The chess board is the stage of this violent action ... and the moves of the pieces—like the movements of dance—are artistically intriguing.”
—Sarianne Soikkonen, Chief Curator, Sara Hildén Art Museum
The exhibition also includes several rarely exhibited "life-size chess piece” sculptures that Dzama created for his 2016 installation in the promenade of the David H. Koch Theater at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, New York.
Installation view, Art Series: Marcel Dzama - The tension around which history is built, New York City Ballet, Promenade of the David H. Koch Theater, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, New York, 2016. Photo: Erin Baiano
Installation view, Art Series: Marcel Dzama - The tension around which history is built, New York City Ballet, Promenade of the David H. Koch Theater, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, New York, 2016. Photo: Erin Baiano
Marcel Dzama and Justin Peck, 2016. Photo: Erin Baiano
Marcel Dzama and Justin Peck, 2016. Photo: Erin Baiano
Marcel Dzama, 2016. Photo: Erin Baiano
Marcel Dzama, 2016. Photo: Erin Baiano
The installation was presented in tandem with The Most Incredible Thing, a one-act ballet by Justin Peck and performed by the New York City Ballet, for which Dzama created the costumes and set design. As curator Sarianne Soikkonen explains, the project was “the largest Gesamtkunstwerk in Dzama’s career so far.”
These large sculptures recall the forms and motifs of several early twentieth-century artists including those in Fernand Léger's early abstractions, specifically Exit the Ballets Russes, and the "sieves" in the lower register of Marcel Duchamp's The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even.
Fernand Léger, Exit the Ballets Russes, 1914. © 2022 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris
Fernand Léger, Exit the Ballets Russes, 1914. © 2022 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris
Marcel Duchamp, The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even (The Large Glass), 1915–1923 (detail). © Estate of Richard Hamilton and Succession Marcel Duchamp/ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London 2022
Marcel Duchamp, The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even (The Large Glass), 1915–1923 (detail). © Estate of Richard Hamilton and Succession Marcel Duchamp/ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London 2022
“In Dzama’s own work, such rich and sometimes chaotic backdrops, however dense, never detract from the powerful, moving and almost prophetic undertones of their unfolding scenarios. This is where the artist’s representation of the world and humanity, as well as the joy or havoc it can bestow on nature and those within it, comes to life. ”
—Duro Olowu, curator
Marcel Dzama in his Brooklyn studio, 2021. Photo: Jason Schmidt
Marcel Dzama in his Brooklyn studio, 2021. Photo: Jason Schmidt
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