{"id":37223578229,"date":"2024-08-28T10:00:49","date_gmt":"2024-08-28T14:00:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mcmichael.com\/?p=37223578229"},"modified":"2025-11-25T13:57:57","modified_gmt":"2025-11-25T18:57:57","slug":"the-dream-like-art-of-marcel-dzama","status":"publish","type":"media-article","link":"https:\/\/mcmichael.com\/fr\/article-media\/the-dream-like-art-of-marcel-dzama\/","title":{"rendered":"The Dream-like Art of Marcel Dzama"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Dream-like Art of Marcel Dzama<\/h1><\/div>

NUVO<\/h2><\/div>

By: Rosie Prata<\/strong><\/p>\n

August 2024<\/strong><\/p>\n

Original URL: The Dream-like Art of Marcel Dzama<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>

<\/span>
<\/div>

Marcel Dzama in his Brooklyn studio, 2021. Photo: Jason Schmidt, Courtesy the artist and David Zwirner<\/p><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>

Diving into the spectral influences behind the artist\u2019s work and his latest solo show Ghosts of Canoe Lake, on a cross-Canada exhibition tour.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>

\u201cI have been keeping these bad, kind of Dracula hours,\u201d\u00a0Marcel Dzama<\/a>\u00a0divulges when I ask how his day has been so far. \u201cI go to sleep at 7:30 a.m.,\u201d he says, explaining that he nods off just after his son heads out to catch the school bus. While Dzama\u2019s extreme nocturnality is a lifelong habit\u2014he attributes it to a prehistoric gene imprinting from \u201cwhoever stood guard at the cave in the nighttime\u201d\u2014this was a late night, even by his standards. He tells me about the large, three-panel drawing he promised to complete in time for\u00a0Art Basel<\/a>\u00a0that has been forcing him to burn the twilight oil.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a giant flood, with creatures, and there\u2019s a Spanish guitar player,\u201d he starts. \u201cIt kind of has that feel of nature taking over\u2014or ending.\u201d This new work, then, continues exploring the climate-related concerns he is also investigating in\u00a0Ghosts of Canoe Lake<\/em>, the first major exhibition the Winnipeg-born, New York-based artist, now 50, has had on home turf in more than a decade. After debuting at the McMichael Canadian Art Collection in Kleinburg,\u00a0Ontario<\/a>, this past December, the suite of 40 new paintings, drawings, collages, and a film runs until October 27 at Contemporary Calgary, then travels to Plug In Institute of Contemporary Art in Winnipeg from November 22 to March 8, 2025.<\/p>\n

Ghosts of Canoe Lake<\/em>\u00a0makes explicit reference to the Algonquin Provincial Park site of Group of Seven contemporary Tom Thomson\u2019s drowning. In 1917, the body of the promising landscape painter was discovered in the lake, tangled in fishing line and with head wounds commensurate with the forceful strike of a paddle. Ever since, the Canadian art world has been obsessed with the mystery of his unsolved death.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>

\"Artwork<\/span>
<\/div>

Marcel Dzama (b. 1974), Ghost of Canoe Lake<\/em>, 2023, pearlescent acrylic, ink, watercolor, and graphite on paper, 36.2 x 36.2 cm, Courtesy the artist and David Zwirner \u00a9 Marcel Dzama<\/p><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>

Dzama\u2019s exhibition wrings out the waterlogged conspiracy theories and revives Thomson as a new member of the cast of merry players that inhabit his artwork. Lions and cats and bears cavort alongside figures in polka-dotted leotards who got their spots from Dada artist Francis Picabia. The midnight sky is speckled with golden stars, and the landscape is lush with jack pines, but almost every scene is threatened to be consumed by either fire or flood. Thomson returns to the site of his death, and the enormity of the problem of environmental catastrophe pulls the artist under once more.<\/p>\n

If this imagery seems the stuff of dreams, or maybe nightmares, that\u2019s because it often is. In the past, Dzama has kept a Moleskine notebook beside his bed to record his subconscious visions, but lately he\u2019s been making voice recordings on his phone instead. I picture him like the artist in Francisco Goya\u2019s 1799 aquatint\u00a0The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters<\/em>, slumped on his table amidst his pencils, paintbrushes, and ink pots, a swarm of owls, bats, and a lynx rising behind him.<\/p>\n<\/div>

\n

\u201cMy best ideas usually come when I am half-asleep, half-awake,\u201d he says. \u201cOr in the shower,\u201d he laughs, \u201cbut I can\u2019t jot those ones down.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>

Lately, everything Dzama paints has been awash in blue, thanks to a month-long trip to Morocco he took with his family in 2018 after a particularly intense period of work. He had finished his project\u00a0The Most Incredible Thing<\/em>\u00a0with the New York City Ballet, had a show with frequent collaborator Raymond Pettibon, and made a film all within half a year, and was feeling burnt out and open to new beginnings.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a city called Chefchaouen, and it\u2019s all blue,\u201d Dzama recalls of the painted town he visited in Morocco\u2019s Rif mountains. It was spring, when the pink moon was hanging low and large in the night sky. \u201cMy son and I were walking to the kasbah there, and it just looked so huge. It was so magical,\u201d he says of the moon. The trip \u201copened up my mind to colour more.\u201d Before then, Dzama worked mostly in \u201cflat colours, red and brown and earth tones,\u201d but \u201cthe way the light was in Morocco, it just made everything appear more brilliant than in my regular life.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>

\"Artwork<\/span>
<\/div>

Marcel Dzama (b. 1974), Waiting on Tom\u2019s ghost<\/em>, 2023, pearlescent acrylic, ink, watercolor, and graphite on paper, 36.8 x 36.2 cm, Courtesy the artist and David Zwirner \u00a9 Marcel Dzama<\/p><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>

Dzama grew up in Winnipeg, where jewel-toned natural wonders and architectural splendours are not found in abundance. In 1996, during his final year at the School of Art at the University of Manitoba, where he was a founding member of the Royal Art Lodge collective, there was a fire at his parents\u2019 house. The blaze gave his dad severe burns, suffocated his pet rabbit, and reduced a lot of the young student\u2019s artwork to ashes. The insurance company put his family up at a hotel, and it was on Airliner Hotel stationery, in a palette of scorched hues, that Dzama drew his thesis project. \u201cI think I had maybe $11,\u201d he remembers, \u201cso I was just using the cheapest supplies I had.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dzama\u2019s professor, Alison Norlen, introduced his drawings to Plug In Institute of Contemporary Art curator Wayne Baerwaldt, who selected them for inclusion in a group show in California. The work sold out (to lucky collectors who nabbed them for $20 a pop), a\u00a0Los Angeles Times<\/em>\u00a0critic lauded his work as \u201csimultaneously sweet and demented,\u201d and Dzama, then living in his parents\u2019 basement, got gallery representation at Richard Heller Gallery in Santa Monica. In 2004 he moved from Winnipeg to New York, and he is now represented by global behemoth David Zwirner Gallery as well as Sies + H\u00f6ke in D\u00fcsseldorf, Germany.<\/p>\n

That tragic fire set his career off on a trajectory it might not have otherwise taken. Before then, he says, \u201cI was doing more messy, big paintings.\u201d (Terminally self-deprecating, Dzama jokes that part of what Baerwaldt might have been drawn to with his thesis project was that it was \u201cvery cheap to ship.\u201d) After Dzama moved to New York, his drawings became more heavily populated, and his compositions began to resemble theatrical stage sets or chess grids. He didn\u2019t find his way back to Canadian art until the pandemic hit, and he started painting trees\u00a0en plein air<\/em>\u00a0in the manner of the Group of Seven and Tom Thomson. He dug up some books to use as reference points, but \u201cI barely knew anything,\u201d he admits. \u201cWhen I was younger, I really disliked landscape drawing. I was more into Dada and Fluxus and that sort of thing.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>

\"Artwork<\/span>
<\/div>

Marcel Dzama (b. 1974), After the Fire, Before the Flood (detail)<\/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<\/p><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>

When McMichael Canadian Art Collection curator Sarah Milroy reached out to Dzama about doing an exhibition of his political works, he asked if he might investigate Canadian landscape painting instead\u2014no less fraught a subject, after all. During the pandemic, Dzama and his family camped out at the U.S.\u2013Canada border, anxiously awaiting an opportunity to spend time with his wife\u2019s father, who was ill. In the news, there was a war starting in Ukraine, where Dzama\u2019s ancestors had emigrated from, and unmarked graves had been found at residential schools, which his wife\u2019s family had been forced to attend. Perhaps he felt the need to reckon with his family\u2019s history. It was time to come home.<\/p>\n

In Dzama\u2019s painting\u00a0Grandmother Passing the Ecstatic Forest in a Swarm of Star Light<\/em>, he references stories told to him by his grandmother, a nurse and midwife, who would walk home at night while cougars were out prowling. Danger is always lurking in the shadows. In the film To\u00a0Live on the Moon (For Lorca)<\/em>, the artist adapts a screenplay written by Spanish surrealist Federico Garc\u00eda Lorca in 1929. \u201cI tried to use as much of the Lorca script as I could, but a lot of it was very, very aggressive. It was early surrealism, where they seem to kill animals a lot, and there are a lot of almost-rape scenes. I was like, I don\u2019t really want to do that,\u201d Dzama says. \u201cIn one of the scenes in Lorca\u2019s film, a priest molests a schoolboy, and so in my version this character is in that situation, but the moon rescues him. Then the priest\u2019s head kind of explodes.\u201d Dzama cast the head in question out of papier m\u00e2ch\u00e9, making something approximating blood and brains out of spaghetti and condoms full of chocolate sauce. \u201cWe painted a watermelon to look like the moon and dropped the watermelon on top of this head,\u201d he giggles.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>

\"Artwork<\/span>
<\/div>

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<\/p><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>

With the film, \u201cmy two obsessions kind of came together,\u201d he says, referring to the figures of Lorca and Thomson, the latter of whom Dzama plays in a plaid shirt and pipe. He notes that \u201cthere were a lot of similarities\u201d between the two men. While Thomson\u2019s disappearance on Canoe Lake is still shrouded in question marks, it\u2019s often alleged that his sexual orientation and political beliefs played a role in his untimely death, as they did with Lorca, who was assassinated by General Franco\u2019s fascist militia in August 1936 at the start of the Spanish Civil War.<\/p>\n<\/div>

\n

Dzama\u2019s ever-present interest in themes of revolution and oppression stems partly from his own experience of growing up in working-class Winnipeg. \u201cThere\u2019s such a rich history there. There was a general strike in 1919\u2014it was the closest thing to a communist revolution in North America,\u201d he says of his home city.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>

His studio in Winnipeg was in the Exchange District, which had its heyday in the 1910s and 1920s\u2014around the same time that Thomson was pushing his oar out into Canoe Lake for the last time. The downtown area\u2019s buildings are painted with so-called ghost signs: palimpsests of advertisements for products such as stomach powder, canned ham, chocolates and candies. Before his career took off, Dzama used to shop at Goodwill and Value Village, which he says were full of products from that era, such as Sears catalogues that he would use for drawing inspiration. \u201cIt really felt like some sort of ghost of that time period was still haunting the city,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>

\"Artwork<\/span>
<\/div>

Marcel Dzama (b. 1974), The Sisters of Nature<\/em>, 2023, pearlescent acrylic, ink, watercolor, and graphite on paper, 36.2 x 36.2 cm, Courtesy the artist and David Zwirner \u00a9 Marcel Dzama<\/p><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>

\u201cI\u2019ve never seen a ghost,\u201d Dzama tells me with a hint of regret, \u201cbut I have had that feeling that something was in the room with me. I used to live in this house in Saskatchewan that felt like it was definitely haunted. It was in the middle of nowhere, in this town called Fosston,\u201d he says. Without witnesses, it\u2019s impossible to say what belongs to the realm of fantasy and what is merely fact. Perhaps the presence Dzama felt that night was an unsettled spirit\u2014a lonesome painter, for instance, who sought to kindle an obsession in the mind of a younger artist who might keep his memory alive. Perhaps truths are less important than the myths they inspire. \u201cI mean,\u201d Dzama reminisces, \u201cit could have just been that I was staying up until five in the morning.\u201d<\/p>\n

Artwork courtesy of the artist and David Zwirner \u00a9Marcel Dzama.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>

<\/i>Open PDF<\/span><\/a><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>
<\/div><\/div>

Ces informations sont aussi disponibles en fran\u00e7ais.<\/em><\/p>\n

Media wishing to request artist\/curator interviews, guided tours, obtain high-resolution images of exhibitions, artwork, or review copies of publications are asked to contact Sam Cheung at\u00a0scheung@mcmichael.com<\/a>\u00a0or 905.893.1121 ext. 2210.<\/p>\n<\/div>

About the McMichael Canadian Art Collection<\/h2><\/div>

The McMichael Canadian Art Collection is an agency of the Government of Ontario and acknowledges the support of the Ministry of Tourism, Culture and Gaming, and the McMichael Canadian Art Foundation. It is the only major museum in the country devoted exclusively to Canadian art. In addition to touring exhibitions, the McMichael houses a permanent collection of more than 7,000 works by historic and contemporary Canadian artists, including Tom Thomson, the Group of Seven and their contemporaries, Indigenous artists and artists from the many diasporic communities. The gallery is located on 100 acres of forested landscape and hiking trails at 10365 Islington Avenue, Kleinburg, north of Major Mackenzie Drive in the City of Vaughan. For more information, please visit mcmichael.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>

Media Contacts<\/h3><\/div>

Sam Cheung<\/h4>\n

Media Relations and Communications Associate
\nMcMichael Canadian Art Collection
\n905.893.1121 x2210
\nscheung@mcmichael.com<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div>

Grace Johnstone<\/h4>\n

Director, Marketing, Communications and Sales
\nMcMichael Canadian Art Collection
\n905.893.1121 x2265
\ngjohnstone@mcmichael.com<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"featured_media":37223578235,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_tec_requires_first_save":true,"_EventAllDay":false,"_EventTimezone":"","_EventStartDate":"","_EventEndDate":"","_EventStartDateUTC":"","_EventEndDateUTC":"","_EventShowMap":false,"_EventShowMapLink":false,"_EventURL":"","_EventCost":"","_EventCostDescription":"","_EventCurrencySymbol":"","_EventCurrencyCode":"","_EventCurrencyPosition":"","_EventDateTimeSeparator":"","_EventTimeRangeSeparator":"","_EventOrganizerID":[],"_EventVenueID":[],"_OrganizerEmail":"","_OrganizerPhone":"","_OrganizerWebsite":"","_VenueAddress":"","_VenueCity":"","_VenueCountry":"","_VenueProvince":"","_VenueState":"","_VenueZip":"","_VenuePhone":"","_VenueURL":"","_VenueStateProvince":"","_VenueLat":"","_VenueLng":"","_VenueShowMap":false,"_VenueShowMapLink":false,"_tribe_blocks_recurrence_rules":"","_tribe_blocks_recurrence_description":"","_tribe_blocks_recurrence_exclusions":"","_ecp_custom_15":"","_ecp_custom_16":"","_ecp_custom_17":""},"class_list":["post-37223578229","media-article","type-media-article","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mcmichael.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media-article\/37223578229","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mcmichael.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media-article"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mcmichael.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/media-article"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mcmichael.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37223578235"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mcmichael.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37223578229"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}