Marcel Dzama: Drawings
This will be Canadian artist Marcel Dzama's (born 1975) second solo show at the gallery. His figurative pen and watercolor drawings, with the now characteristic palette of muted brows, grays, reds, yellows and greens have been internationally exhibited, most recently in Venice, Dusseldorf and Geneva.
Typically, Dzama strips his figures of all extenuating circumstances including philosophical and political pretensions, and therefore strips them of a narrative potential. The figures are left bare and simple with traces of unspoken inhibitions falling away. Dzama places his modestly scaled and increasingly detailed figures on large 10 x 13-inch sheets of Manila paper. His figures and words swim in a sea of blank space, transforming the inherent potential of that blank space to reveal a sea of invisible possibilities. Each drawing is an opportunity for viewers to contemplate a range of disparate subjects like Spiderman, faux film noir scenes, absurd Surrealist dramas, The Wizard of Oz, mutant Inuit forms, The Grapes of Wrath, Jean-Pierre Jeunet's City of Lost Children, a multitude of l950s sci-fi sets, E.T., or many other sources from high and low forms of culture.