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Whimsical costumes, hybrid creatures, and Kalashnikov-wielding ballerinas are just a few of the motifs that make up Marcel Dzama’s charming visual language. Born in Winnipeg, where, as the artist poetically notes, the winter snow would stretch across the landscape like a blank page, Dzama discovered a love of drawing at a young age, and went on to earn a BFA at the University of Manitoba in 1997. Referencing eclectic influences that range from Dadaism and dance to gothic horror and fairy tales, Dzama has expanded his oeuvre over the years to encompass drawings, collage, sculpture, and film, occasionally experimenting with unusual materials such as root beer and mustard. In January, David Zwirner, which has represented Dzama since 1998, opened the artist’s first solo exhibition in Hong Kong, titled “Crossing the Line,” which was inspired by Dzama’s trip to the city in 2018. AAP spoke with Dzama over email to discuss his travels, his love of ballet, and why he cast actress and writer Amy Sedaris to play himself in his films.
Why did you title your show “Crossing the Line?”
One of the main inspirations I took from my trip to Hong Kong last year was horseracing. The sport plays a very important role in Winnipeg, where I grew up, and I also often watch horseracing in New York with [the artist] Raymond Pettibon. When I was last in Hong Kong, I noticed quite a bit of horseracing involved in the culture and thought it would be interesting to have a show relating to our visits to the racetrack and its history in my drawings. “Crossing the Line” means the moment when the horses cross the finish line. On another level, this is my first show in this region, so I’m also crossing the line in many aspects.
What else inspired the works in this show?
I bought a lot of old vinyl records while I was in Hong Kong. They were mostly from the 1960s and I love the names of the songs. I tried to incorporate them into some of the drawings. One of the songs in the new video I’m showing is from that batch of records. I also found a few children’s books from the ’50s that I incorporated into my drawings.
Do you consciously include elements of places that you have visited into your art?
I don’t do it consciously but I’m always inspired by the places where I’ve traveled. I’m a bit of a collector so whenever I go somewhere, I usually bring back something that sparks a new artwork.
MARCEL DZAMA, And who breaks a butterfly on a wheel? or A rapture, a butterfly, a dancer and a bowie knife, 2018, gouache and ink on paper, 115.3 × 93.3 cm. Copyright the artist. Courtesy the artist and David Zwirner, Hong Kong / London / New York.
Fragments of text in various languages often feature in your two-dimensional pieces. Viewers of your work will probably encounter a line that they don’t understand at some point. Is this your intention?
I enjoy playing with language since I know only two languages. I like the idea of a broken language; it has a poetic feel to it because it’s so random, like an “exquisite corpse” poem.
I do like keeping things a little mysterious. Sometimes I’ll take a title from a song in a language I don’t know and use it in a drawing. I’ll have some idea of what the song is about from the feeling and from the style of the music, but I have no idea what the lyrics are. I like that game at chance—giving a title to a drawing without even knowing what the title is exactly, but feeling what it is.
I also feel that the drawings exist in their own world, not in our world, so a language can make no sense to us but will make perfect sense in that dimension.
Dance is a prominent element of your artistic practice. You also worked on the New York City Ballet’s production of “The Most Incredible Thing” (2016), based on the fairy tale by Hans Christian Anderson. What drew you to dance initially, and has your relationship to dance changed over the years as you’ve become more acquainted with it?
I got into ballet via a most unusual route. When I moved to New York from Winnipeg, I found that my drawings were becoming more cluttered, and being cluster-phobic, I started putting the characters in dance positions to give them a sense of order. I started buying dance magazines from the 1960s and ’70s at flea markets and used bookstores. I drew from their poses but then I started to read the articles and became interested in ballet.
I made a few videos with a lot of choreography and major dance routines. I also made stage-set dioramas.
In 2015, I made the sets and costumes for the New York City Ballet. There were over 64 different costumes and two backdrops. I got to know and became friends with the choreographer and a lot of the dancers involved in that production. I’ve worked with them since in film and am planning to work on another project next year on the stage.
Your stage-like dioramas reflect a theatricality that is visible across your oeuvre, whether through the dance motif or references to classic cinema. How has the stage influenced you?
The dioramas started as gifts for my wife that were more in the style of Joseph Cornell’s assemblages. Once I was more influenced by ballet, they slowly became more stage-like.
Also, the stage designs by the Bauhaus school were a major influence. One of my favorite films, The Red Shoes (1948), is about ballet. [Bauhaus-trained Hein Heckroth was the production designer.] It has a whole surrealist dance scene in the middle of it. It’s in beautiful Technicolor.
MARCEL DZAMA, The spirits of the air live off of the smell of revolution, 2018, gouache and graphite on paper, 35.6 × 55.9 cm. Copyright the artist. Courtesy the artist and David Zwirner, Hong Kong / London / New York.
Why do you consider the ideas and aesthetics of fantasy, folklore and surrealism productive for commenting on real-world issues?
They really are symbols of modern mythology and work perfectly as metaphors. I’ve found myself needing to do political drawings as therapy after listening to the radio news or reading the newspaper, to get it out of my system.
Your art often melds humor and horror; for example, you depict cartoon characters wielding deadly weapons. How do you balance these tensions in your work?
I like my work to oscillate between humor and horror, hope and melancholy, naivety and knowingness, empathy and apathy. Each time it swings too close to one, gravity pulls it back to the other.
In your new film, Dance Floor Dracula, Prelude in C-Sharp Minor (2018), Amy Sedaris and Raymond Pettibon reprise their respective roles from some of your earlier films as you and gallerist David Zwirner. Why did you choose to craft a story with a fictionalized version of yourself?
The film started when I was working on sets and costumes at the New York City Ballet and I was asked to do a lot of speeches and interviews. I am a little socially awkward so I asked my friend Amy Sedaris if she would impersonate me. She was into it, the Ballet wasn’t, but I liked the idea of her playing a fictionalized version of myself and started filming whatever situation I found myself in during the production and putting her in it.
At the time, I was also working with Raymond Pettibon on a collaborative show [“Forgetting the Hand”] at David Zwirner. [For my 2015 film A Flower of Evil, which was shown at that exhibition,] I had an actor playing Raymond Pettibon and Raymond Pettibon playing David Zwirner. Dance Floor Dracula is part of that series of films, which I’m still working on. It should be finished in the next year.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Ophelia Lai is the reviews editor of ArtAsiaPacific.
Marcel Dzama’s “Crossing the Line” is on view at David Zwirner, Hong Kong, until March 9, 2019.
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