The Canadian artist Marcel Dzama cannot stay in one lane. While studying art at the University of Manitoba in the mid-1990s, he played in bands, and lots of them. Among others, there was Professor Moriarty for heavy rock, Tumbleweed for country music and Danceatron for, well, dance music. That freewheeling spirit has continued throughout the 48-year-old’s career. Best known for his figurative drawings, Dzama also makes dioramas, puppets, costumes, stage designs, films, songs, fanzines and sculptures. He has collaborated with Spike Jonze, Maurice Sendak, Beck, Kim Gordon, Raymond Pettibon, Bob Dylan and the New York City Ballet. It’s a lot.
“I keep really bad hours,” he says blearily from his seaside house in Long Island, having just woken up. “I stayed up till five last night, finishing a new painting.” He has a charmingly gentle, unworldly quality. Being so prolific means that he needs reminding of what he’s done. “The titles I forget,” he apologises. “I’ll blame my memory on the pandemic.”
During lockdown, everything relating to collaboration and performance evaporated and Dzama’s life was distilled to fundamentals: his wife, his young son and his drawings. His pictures have often combined innocence with menace, like illustrations from a book of violent, surreal fairytales, but Child of Midnight, his new show at the David Zwirner gallery in London, leans towards lush escapism. “The last few years have been so traumatic that I wanted to have something beautiful out there,” he says. “A lot of my earlier work was more world-weary.”
Photographs from pre-pandemic travels to Morocco and Mexico informed the show’s friendly moons, radiant stars and tropical oceans, rendered in watercolour, graphite and pearlescent acrylic ink, while Neil Young’s 1974 album On the Beach provided the late-night soundtrack. According to the gallery’s website, the waterscapes “seem to portend the continued degradation of the natural world” but Dzama doesn’t sound sure. “I am really concerned about climate change but it’s not blatant,” he says. “I’m very relaxed when I’m working on them.” His political drawings are quicker and angrier. “They’re actually really stressful. There’s this weird energy that I need to get out and once it’s done I can relax a little bit.”
As a child, Dzama enjoyed drawing on the backs of board games and cereal boxes. “I’m from Winnipeg and the winters are really long there so it’s almost like isolation,” he says. “A lot of it came from not having much to do.”
He was still living with his parents when their house burned down in 1996, destroying most of his art-school paintings. He rebuilt his portfolio in temporary accommodation by drawing on hotel stationery while watching HBO. These drawings became his thesis project, which caught the eye of a visiting curator and earned him his first show at the age of 23. Dzama’s pieces cost just $20 then but are worth a lot more now, with celebrity collectors including Brad Pitt and Nicolas Cage.
Dzama is currently working with members of LCD Soundsystem on music for A Flower of Evil, a long-gestating mock-documentary that dates back to an unusually busy and acclaimed period in 2016. “I could feel my ego growing, so I wanted to make fun of myself,” he says. “Amy Sedaris plays me as this asshole artist who’s very full of himself.”
Speaking to him now, this is very hard to imagine. How is his ego these days? He laughs softly: “I think it’s normal.”
Five works by Marcel Dzama
Even the moon is uneasy, 2022
“That’s a sketch idea for a possible performance. I’m obsessed with the moon because of a trip to Morocco. It was bigger than I’d ever seen: red and extra-brilliant. Since then it’s been incorporated into my work.”
Midnight’s Children, 2022
“I was trying to balance that feeling you get when you look out at space but also the panic of what you’re living through in the moment. Salman Rushdie had just been stabbed. Also my son was watching Ms Marvel, which is about the partition, so it was in the air.”
So they say, everything gonna be all right, 2021 (main image)
“I did an underwater series and they feel like swimming. There is a meditative feel. I wanted to do one I could put in my son’s room so I made it extra positive. They’re drifting off to sea with a boat full of kittens. I’ve always enjoyed Maurice Sendak’s children’s books. There’s this edge to his work. When we were drawing together I actually had nostalgia for the moment: I can’t believe this is happening!”
On the banks of the Red River, 2008
“The Red River runs through Winnipeg but it was more of a river-of-blood idea,” Dzama says. “These hunters are shooting these animals and they’re falling from the sky. I was also thinking of colonialism and the greed of whatever corporations are reaping benefits from animals.”
The Death Disco Dance steps, 2013
“When I was in Mexico, I made this film called A Game of Chess, a live-action chess-game ballet. The sun was just setting so I said we should do something quick, so we did a little dance. I made a loop and played a disco beat on a little drum machine. I wanted the drawing to represent that piece.”
Child of Midnight is at the David Zwirner gallery, London, 17 November until 22 December.
