Marcel Dzama Who Loves The Sun

Lying deep within the urban metropolis of Hong Kong, Happy Valley is one of the most iconic racecourses in the world. It is also the chief source of inspiration for a new body of work by American artist Marcel Dzama. Jockeys ride through waves and cathedrals, Chinese symbols pulled from racing paraphernalia adorn the edges of paper, and bats swoop, hunting for prey. Dzama’s distinct visions of the racetrack come alive through a series of large-scale paintings and drawings, transposing imagery from his prolific oeuvre into this adrenaline-filled sporting arena. His new works reflect on the culture of horseracing and how the track has become not only a symbol of sport, but also of commerce, class, and wealth. The publication includes a conversation between Dzama and Laila Pedro. Published on the occasion of his solo exhibition at David Zwirner, Hong Kong in 2019, Marcel Dzama: Crossing the Line is available in both English only and bilingual English/traditional Chinese editions.

Set in an enchanted forest, Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream is the ideal subject for artist Marcel Dzama, whose work frequently references dreams, fairy tales, and mythical worlds. Inspired by Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Shakespeare’s celebrated romantic comedy intertwines multiple narratives under the influence of transformation and witchcraft. The play is often staged with actors wearing animal masks, an aspect which appeals particularly to Dzama, whose work is characterized by the fusion of human and animal, fantasy and reality. The second title in David Zwirner Books’s Seeing Shakespeare series revisits the ultimate fairy tale through the eyes of a contemporary artist who feels a special affinity for its imagery.

The first in a series of small-format publications devoted to single bodies of work, Fire from the Sun highlights Michaël Borremans’s new work, which features toddlers engaged in playful but mysterious acts with sinister overtones and insinuations of violence. Known for his ability to recall classical painting, both through technical mastery and subject matter, Borremans’s depiction of the uncanny, the perhaps secret, the bizarre, often surprises, sometimes disturbs the viewer. In this series of work, children are presented alone or in groups against a studio-like backdrop that negates time and space, while underlining the theatrical atmosphere and artifice that exists throughout Borremans’s recent work. Reminiscent of cherubs in Renaissance paintings, the toddlers appear as allegories of the human condition, their archetypal innocence contrasted with their suggested deviousness. In his accompanying essay, critic and curator Michael Bracewell takes an in-depth look into specific paintings, tackling both the highly charged subject matter and the masterly command of the medium. He writes, “The art of Michaël Borremans seems always to have been predicated on a confluence of enigma, ambiguity, and painterly poetics—accosting beauty with strangeness; making historic Romanticism subjugate to mysterious controlling forces that are neither crudely malevolent nor necessarily benign.” Published on the occasion of Borremans’s eponymous exhibition at David Zwirner in Hong Kong, this publication is available in both English-only and bilingual English/traditional Chinese editions.

Marcel Dzama (born 1974) is one of contemporary art's hottest stars, and The Infidels is the most beautifully produced and substantial monograph on his work to date. Housed in a beige cloth cover featuring a tipped-in image, The Infidels contains fantastically sharp reproductions of paintings, drawings, film storyboards, collages and dioramas from the past two years, and installation shots from Dzama's exhibition of these works at Sies + Höke Gallery in Düsseldorf. The book also records an increased politicization in the artist's concerns, with references to American history and current events erupting in evocations of torture, terrorism and warfare (a partial result of Dzama's relocation from Winnipeg to New York). One special highlight of The Infidels is a new series of dioramas, housed in wooden boxes and vitrines, which transports Dzama's world of knife-wielding ghouls, mutant animal men and hooded, gun-toting girls into a three-dimensional wunderkammer, with figurines made of plaster, little cages with white cubes (a homage to Duchamp's "Why Not Sneeze?" assemblage), inscriptions and even taxidermied mice and birds, all recruited into the enacting of historical and mythic scenarios. These magical dioramas prove that the borders of Dzama's fantasy land continue to expand and find new forms and stages for their expression.

The princess’s hand in marriage was promised to the man who could accomplish the most incredible thing. He would also receive half of the Kingdom. All the young men, and the not-so-young men, dreamt of this prize and would do their best to achieve the most incredible things... Hans Christian Andersen (1805-1875) was a Danish author, poet and artist. Celebrated for children’s literature, his most cherished fairy tales include "The Emperor's New Clothes", "The Little Mermaid", "The Nightingale", "The Steadfast Tin Soldier", "The Snow Queen", "The Ugly Duckling" and "The Little Match Girl". His books have been translated into every living language, and today there is no child or adult that has not met Andersen's whimsical characters. His fairy tales have been adapted to stage and screen countless times, most notably by Disney with the animated films "The Little Mermaid" in 1989 and "Frozen", which is loosely based on "The Snow Queen", in 2013. Thanks to Andersen's contribution to children's literature, his birth date, April 2, is celebrated as International Children's Book Day.

Marcel Dzama (*1974 in Winnipeg) is known for his prolific drawings, which are characterized by their distinctive palette and subject matter. He has recently expanded his practice to encompass film and three-dimensional works, thus developing an immediately recognizable language that draws from a diverse range of references and artistic influences, including Dada and Marcel Duchamp. Created in close collaboration with the artist, this publication presents his 2013 exhibition at David Zwirner in London, which included videos inspired by the game of chess and puppets and masks based on the characters, along with drawings, collages, dioramas, paintings, and sculptural works. Dzama utilized the architecture of the gallery itself--an eighteenth-century Georgian townhouse--by hanging puppets from a skylight above the five-story building's central spiral staircase and placing monitors in the windows so that his videos could be viewed from the street.