ART CITIES:Paris-Marcel Dzama

Drawing is the foundation of Marcel Dzama’s work. He got his breakthrough as a young artist with his distinctive colored drawings in saturated shades, self-made fables and a surreal drama and black humor, an image world that could be taken from a fictitious U.S.A., influenced by early superhero comics, science fiction and early Hollywood.

By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: David Zwirner Gallery Archive

Marcel Dzama in his solo exhibition “Blue Moon of Morocco” presents collages and drawings by the artist that were inspired by his travels in Morocco. Travel has become increasingly important in Dzama’s art, as he seeks to create works informed by both the distinctive cultures he has immersed himself in and his own subjective experiences. In 2018, invited by Louis Vuitton Editions to create the latest volume of the company’s “Travel Book” series of contemporary artist-illustrated journals “Travel Book”, Dzama traveled to Morocco, visiting cities, seaside towns, mountainous villages, and desert communities. He charted a path that included stops in Tangier, Essaouira, Chefchaouen, Fez, Beni Mellal, Marrakech, and the Agafay Desert. As Dzama, his wife, and their then 5-year-old son spent a month driving around the country, with stops in the cities of Tangiers, Fez, and Marrakech as well as the Rif mountains and the Agafay Desert, the Canadian artist found himself following in the footsteps of Délacroix and Henri Matisse (whose extended stays in Morocco exaggerated their vibrant, fantastical, and unabashedly Orientalist impulses). This, too, was a detour for Dzama, who is normally more influenced by the acerbic and cerebral art of Goya and Duchamp. As the artist notes “I was experimenting more and more with brighter colors,” he recalls. “I found myself using a lot more blues and yellows. Usually I have a very muted palette.” Turquoise leaves reminiscent of Matisse’s cutouts float through the backgrounds of several drawings, and two works are even titled as homages to the master. Elsewhere, carpet and tile patterns expand to fill entire pages; like many visitors to Morocco, Dzama admits to a carpet-buying spree: “We bought more than what would work in our house. Every square foot is filled with a Moroccan carpet now”.  At times, working on some of these unfinished drawings back at home in Boerum Hill, Brooklyn, Dzama allowed his imagination to fill in the details. This explains the mischievous figures in masks and capes who seem to have dropped in from earlier Dzamas, inserting themselves in between snake charmers and street merchants in more traditional Moroccan dress. The exhibition also features a group of new drawings, created in June 2020 in New York, that display the lasting influence of the artist’s time in Morocco on his art.

Info: David Zwirner Gallery, 108 rue Vieille du Temple, Paris, Duration: 2-25/7/20, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 11:00-19:00, www.davidzwirner.com