The gallery will open on March 18th with an exhibition of recent drawings by the Canadian artist Marcel Dzama (born 1975). This is the artist's first solo show in New York. Dzama's work is also currently included in a group show, "Spring Selections '98" at The Drawing Center in New York.
The drawings are rendered in simple outlines and muted colors on notebook size paper, which have the appearance of pages torn out of the artist's sketchbook . Dzama introduces a cast of idiosyncratic creatures that participate in both bizarre and banal acts. The artist creates a surrealistic world where humans, animals and hybrids coexist, such as a donkey-headed man dancing with a young woman, and a man talking to a cow-headed creature.
Although the characters and situations are often repeated, the drawings do not adhere to a sequential narrative. In fact, as suggested by The Los Angeles Times critic, David Pagel, the drawings "look as if [they] belong to an unfinished children's book, aborted not because [they] depicted events too grim for kids but because the artist himself had no idea where the narrative was going. Rather than being a drawback, this sense of unfinished business is one of the best things about Dzama's art."