{"id":37223574849,"date":"2024-03-01T10:00:51","date_gmt":"2024-03-01T15:00:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mcmichael1.wpenginepowered.com\/?p=37223574849"},"modified":"2025-11-25T14:12:05","modified_gmt":"2025-11-25T19:12:05","slug":"in-marcel-dzamas-work-the-climate-crisis-is-fuelling-a-crisis-of-imagination","status":"publish","type":"media-article","link":"https:\/\/mcmichael.com\/fr\/article-media\/in-marcel-dzamas-work-the-climate-crisis-is-fuelling-a-crisis-of-imagination\/","title":{"rendered":"In Marcel Dzama\u2019s Work, the Climate Crisis Is Fuelling a Crisis of Imagination"},"content":{"rendered":"

In Marcel Dzama\u2019s Work, the Climate Crisis Is Fuelling a Crisis of Imagination<\/h1>\n

Frieze<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

By:\u00a0<\/span>Brandon Kaufman<\/p>\n

March 1, 2024<\/span><\/p>\n

Original URL: In Marcel Dzama\u2019s Work, the Climate Crisis Is Fuelling a Crisis of Imagination | Frieze<\/span><\/a>
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\nAt McMichael Canadian Art Collection, the artist revisits landscape painter Tom Thomson\u2019s Canoe Lake
\nas it\u2019s threatened by floods and forest fires<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

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Marcel Dzama (b. 1974), TBC (scrapbook)<\/em>, 2023, pearlescent acrylic, ink, Polaroids, and collage on board, 28.3 x 43.2 cm, Courtesy the artist and David Zwirner \u00a9 Marcel Dzama<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Canoe Lake, in Algonquin Park, Ontario, is where the great Canadian landscape painter Tom Thomson occasionally lived and worked \u2013 and where, at the age of 39, he drowned. Thomson\u2019s influence lives on in the Group of Seven, with whom he was associated, and in \u2018Ghosts of Canoe Lake\u2019, Winnipeg-born Marcel Dzama\u2019s first exhibition in Canada in nearly a decade. Across three dozen pictures at the McMichael Canadian Art Collection in Kleinburg, Dzama transplants the vision of Thomson\u2019s and the Group\u2019s landscapes onto our ecological reality.<\/p>\n

Effective landscape painting beckons the viewer with nature\u2019s majesty, and works by Thomson and the Group will transport them to the foot of a river in British Columbia or to the top of rolling mountains in Quebec. Dzama has long been captivated by Thomson\u2019s paintings, yet here his interest seems less in landscape as a genre and more in how such exalted scenes occupy our imagination \u2013 and how the climate crisis in turn fuels a crisis of inspiration.<\/p>\n

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Marcel Dzama (b. 1974), We can not abandon such beauty<\/em>, 2023, pearlescent acrylic, ink, watercolor, and graphite on paper, 30.5 x 36.2 cm, Courtesy the artist and David Zwirner \u00a9 Marcel Dzama<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

One epiphenomenon of climate collapse is a certain permeability of place: melting Antarctic ice caps threaten Miami shorelines; a burning tree in Australia sends its ash to New Zealand. In the Anthropocene, beauty becomes an engine of death that even the characteristic ebullience of Dzama\u2019s paintings cannot escape. Throughout the exhibition, the artist complicates the geographic and temporal borders of Canoe Lake, which, as both Thomson\u2019s subject and the site of his death, endures as a quintessential cultural symbol of the Canadian outdoors. Where Thomson\u2019s landscapes of the lake eschewed figuration, Dzama\u2019s work is populated by whimsically rendered people and animals. Dancing, singing, swimming \u2013 the figures take on an alien presence, eliding the distinction between the lake as a cultural symbol and a geographic site threatened by floods and fires.<\/p>\n

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Marcel Dzama (b. 1974), Grandmother passing the ecstatic forest in a swarm of star light<\/em>, 2023, pearlescent acrylic, ink, watercolor, and graphite on paper, 33 x 33.7 cm, Courtesy the artist and David Zwirner \u00a9 Marcel Dzama<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Take, for example, We can not abandon such beauty (<\/em>all works 2023). In the foreground, a figure wearing a polka-dot costume, as if visiting from Francis Picabia\u2019s ballet Rel\u00e2che<\/em> (Cancelled, 1924), pets an owl. The allusion to dada and surrealism imparts a dreamlike element. Behind, a forest is draped in hellish fire. Above, wispy clouds stretch across an idyllic, turquoise expanse. Dzama creates a feeling of sublime in disaster \u2013 of spatial depth and synchronicity of time and place.<\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t landscape as we know it: this is a landscape of the mind, one that beckons and threatens with equal force. Dzama offers his own memories of his childhood in Manitoba and of vacations with his son. In Grandmother passing the ecstatic forest in a swarm of star light<\/em>, the artist\u2019s grandmother gazes into the distance, a nurse\u2019s cape tied around her neck, giving her the appearance of a comic-book superhero. Our son found a puppet & a puppy<\/em> depicts a family vacation at the lake: Dzama\u2019s son \u2013 his facial features ill-defined \u2013 holds a dog while gazing directly at the viewer, penetrating the picture plane. Although the artist\u2019s penchant for whimsical in-jokes and allusion can feel cloying at times (see To Live on the Moon [For Lorca],<\/em> an incongruously eccentric digital video first exhibited at the Performa Biennial 2023 and installed here in a central tent), his style mostly effectively supports this phantasmagorical realm where space-time has collapsed.<\/p>\n

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Marcel Dzama (b. 1974), To Live on the Moon (for Lorca)<\/em>, 2023, pearlescent acrylic, ink, watercolor, and graphite on paper, 28.3 x 43.2 cm, Courtesy the artist and David Zwirner \u00a9 Marcel Dzama<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Under climate change, disparate natural beauties threaten one another. In the spring of 2023, swaths of the same Canadian forests painted by Thomson and the Group erupted into fires, sending smoke billowing into the US and as far as Europe. In Brooklyn, where the artist now lives, the sky was tinted orange. While Dzama may have located some of the ghosts of Canoe Lake, others are surely to follow.<\/p>\n

Marcel Dzama’s ‘Ghosts of Canoe Lake’<\/span><\/a> is on view at McMichael Canadian Art Collection until 9 June.<\/p>\n<\/div>

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Media wishing to request an interview with exhibition artists, curators, or to obtain high-resolution images of the artworks are asked to contact Sam Cheung at\u00a0<\/span>scheung@mcmichael.com<\/a> or 905.893.1121 ext. 2210.<\/span>
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Ces informations sont aussi disponible en fran\u00e7ais.\u00a0 <\/em><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>

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ABOUT THE MCMICHAEL CANADIAN ART COLLECTION<\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/h2>\n

The McMichael Canadian Art Collection is an agency of the Government of Ontario and acknowledges the support of the Ministry of Heritage, Sport, Tourism and Culture Industries, and the McMichael Canadian Art Foundation. It is the only major museum in the country\u00a0devoted exclusively to Canadian art. In addition to touring exhibitions, the McMichael houses a permanent collection of more than 6,500 works by historic and\u00a0contemporary\u00a0Canadian artists, including Tom Thomson, the Group of Seven and their contemporaries, Indigenous artists and artists from many diasporic communities in Canada. The Gallery is located on 100 acres of\u00a0forested\u00a0land and hiking trails at 10365 Islington Avenue,\u00a0Kleinburg,\u00a0north\u00a0of Major Mackenzie Drive in the City of Vaughan. For more information, please visit mcmichael.com.<\/a>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>

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MEDIA CONTACTS<\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\n<\/div>

Sam Cheung<\/strong><\/span>
\nMedia Relations and Communications Coordinator<\/em><\/span>
\nMcMichael Canadian Art Collection<\/span>
\n905.893.1121 ext. 2210<\/span>
\nscheung@mcmichael.com<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>

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Grace Johnstone<\/strong><\/span>
\nDirector, Communications, Marketing and Sales<\/span>
\nMcMichael Canadian Art Collection<\/span>
\n905-893-1121 x2265<\/span>
\ngjohnstone@mcmichael.com<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>

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