September 26, 2014 saw the season premiere of the tenth year of The Review Panel with newcomers Alexander Nagel and Dorothy Spears joining veteran guest Robert Storr with David Cohen moderating as ever.  The shows under review were of Allora & Calzadilla at Gladstone Gallery, Marcel Dzama at David Zwirner, Angela Dufresne at Monya Rowe and Justine Kurland at Mitchell-Innes & Nash.

In discussing Angela Dufresne’s exhibition, Robert Storr introduces the work of Jane Corrigan, showing at Kerry Schuss next door.

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Maybe the Jeff Koons portrait of Louis XIV triggers the association, but Labor Day always reminds me of the Sun King: “après moi, le deluge.” We are certainly in the thick of back-to-school excitement in New York City.  The need for critical clarity and a roadmap are all the more acute. So, welcome to the new season from artcritical.com

With artist duo Allora & Calzadilla at Barbara Gladstone getting off to a singing start last weekend (literally, enlisting the service of boy choristers) all four shows selected for the season premiere of The Review Panel are now open for inspection. Newcomers to the program, Alexander Nagel and Dorothy Spears join veteran Review Panelist Rob Storr and myself September 26 at the National Academy Museum for an evening of critical debate.

The other shows under consideration are Angela Dufresne at Monya Rowe, Marcel Dzama at David Zwirner and Justine Kurland at Mitchell-Innes & Nash. Can you believe it’s the tenth year of The Review Panel? It seems like no time has passed since Jerry Saltz and Ken Johnson locked horns that October night in 2004, with Walter Robinson and Alexi Worth heckling from the back row that we weren’t doing our job properly. The Review Panel now seems like an institution. The event also enters its fourth annual season in Philadelphia, at the Pennsylvania Academy, next month. Details of all the dates, speakers and venues are at artcritical with links to a decade of podcasts.

Our other big news at artcritical is that we have a new Associate Editor: Noah Dillon. Noah, who is also an artist, is a graduate of the Art Criticism and Writing MFA program at SVA, and both he and that program’s director, David Levi Strauss, will appear on The Review Panel next Spring. Noah’s critical acumen and intellectual ambition have already made themselves felt in our pages over the summer. He replaces our first Associate Editor, Nora Griffin, who is now a contributing editor. To get a flavor of his mind, check out his contribution to BOODMARKED, the series where writers and artists show us the scope of their online reading.

David Cohen, Publisher and Editor

Selected articles posted recently: Irving Sandler in conversation with Franklin Einspruch, discussing the show he has curated at Loretta Howard Gallery; Alexandra Nicolaides brings a forensic eye to bear on media representations of the tragic shooting in Ferguson, MO; Lilly Wei remembers critic, curator and dandy Edward Leffingwell; Barry Schwabsky on Danielle Tegeder, in our Essay series of catalogue publications from significant solo exhibitions in public spaces outside New York.

And a few to look out for in the coming week: Hearne Pardee writing from Paris on Martial Raysse; David Carrier on Harry Roseman getting a haircut; Jessica Holmes on Monika Sosnowska’s Tower at Hauser & Wirth; David Cohen on Matthew Ritchie, and John Goodrich on Geoffrey Dorfman. To get the fastest scoop on postings, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

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February 17 – March 19, 2011
525 West 19th Street
New York City, 212 727 2070

In the past decade, Marcel Dzama has largely become known for intricate figurative drawings in which, with an unusual blend of charm, humor and bite, he depicts a vast array of distinct characters and fabled creatures. Walking trees, owls, nurses, bats, bears, cowboys, ghosts and even snowmen are among signature protagonists that inhabit a world rich in exotic adventure. Scenes range from somewhat whimsical to outright dark and it is Dzama’s strength that he is able to stage a complex spectrum of emotions. His figures can find themselves entangled in both moments of tenderness and extreme tension – the latter usually defined by sexual aggression or even lust for murder.

Though “Behind Every Curtain” remains true to Dzama’s vocabulary, the exhibition documents the artist’s continuous search for new twists and ways to channel his vision into different media. To start, his new drawings reveal an increasing affinity for complexity and density. Most are made of adjoined sheets of paper or scrolls. In addition, large clusters of figures fill out almost the entire picture plane and evoke mysterious patterns. The backgrounds, which were formerly left spare, now contain inscriptions, fragments of linear structures and charts. By layering his compositions, Dzama introduces a notion of spatial depth that is further explored in his dioramas.

Closely related to the drawings, these captivating objects also assemble large groups of figures. Organized on different planes and depicted mainly in shades of red and gray, they form a stark contrast to the architectural structures, which are left white. Much of Dzama’s oeuvre translates as a serious study of play and the dioramas function as miniature theaters, onto whose stages the artist projects his imagination. But Dzama has never been interested in presenting his audience with ordinary narratives. His characters might have personalities, but they hardly serve as storytellers. As is the case in dance, it is primarily the expressiveness of their gestures that conveys meaning. Their actions seem rooted in the abstractions of a dream rather than in reality. This makes for a Surrealist undercurrent, from which Dzama’s increasing interest in Operatic drama emerges.

Over the years, Dzama has repeatedly avoided categorization. Even during his formative years in Winnipeg as a co-founder of The Royal Art Lodge, an artist collective whose members would collaborate weekly on drawings and sculptures, Dzama was devoted to versatility. Be it due to simply embracing unabashed experimentation or the more conscious striving for creating a Gesamtkunstwerk, Dzama’s quest is without doubt always genuine.  That does not mean that all his ventures have been equally successful. His paintings for example always felt a touch awkward, trying to translate the drawings into the new medium but lacking the same technical finesse. In contrast, his dioramas appear as a natural extension of the language he originally set up on paper and his films have also quickly gained in sophistication. The music video he directed with Patrick Daughters for the band Department of Eagles in 2009, being one of the most prominent examples.

This exhibition culminates with “A Game of Chess”, Dzama’s fourteen minutes long homage to Marcel Duchamp’s favorite board game. Incorporating Dada references, Bauhaus aesthetics, and nods to Oscar Schlemmer’s Triadic Ballet of 1922 and the Winnipeg filmmaker Guy Maddin, Dzama’s dramatic black & white projection depicts performers dressed in geometrically designed costumes. Concealed by elaborate masks, they dance across a checkered board, each delicate ballet step registering like a staccato. The film has its entrancing moments, aided by the fact that the music weaves together seamlessly with the visuals. Again, the narrative gives way to an overall orchestration of emotions. However, the weight that the exhibition puts on this work is distracting. “Behind Every Curtain” leads the audience through rooms filled with drawings, dioramas and rotating sculptures, finding its crescendo in a large screening room in the back. This layout transforms Dzama’s other works into mere props to his latest film. This does not serve Dzama well, as it is his unique trail of thought, not one sole work that is the most impressive.

Ultimately, there is much to discover in “Behind Every Curtain.” While there is a large group of simply stunning works, the most crucial realization one takes from the exhibition is that Dzama remains an artist with a wide-open path ahead. He has set his stakes high by breaking away repeatedly from what he knows. One can expect that this approach to art making will lead him to both repeated success and error. Considering that the former came to him early, while still in his twenties, it is refreshing to know that he allows himself to find the latter as he matures. He occasionally might stumble, but he certainly will get stronger as well.

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March 6 to April 19, 2008

Marcel Dzama’s drawings evoke the ethos of an adult dreamscape while recalling a style of children’s picture book. What is at first impression a benign arrangement of recurring characters on the vacancy of a blank Manila paper, upon closer investigation reveals the thirty-four year-old artist’s inner world as a theatre of acute anxiety, perversion, violence and irrationality.  “Even the Ghosts of the Past,” Dzama’s current exhibition at David Zwirner Gallery, indicates new explorations of media and references. While his choice of characters increasingly engages our country’s current political climate, constructing sculptural dioramas has given a palpable form and malaise to his work.

Dividing the exhibition into two distinct spaces, Dzama has displayed his drawings and sketchbooks in the front gallery under conventional lighting and white walls, while he has darkened the rear, revealing six dioramas and the filmLotus Eaters (2005). Recalling the recessed displays in natural history museums, these dioramas in their dark environment also suggest a frightening uneasiness reminiscent of the haunted house experience of childhood. The film, a composite of 8mm, 16mm and Fisher Price sources, expands the vocabulary of Dzama’s drawings through motion picture and, on selected days, is accompanied by a live piano player who performs a soundtrack specific to the film but by physical proximity provides an additional dimension to the dioramas.

In the front gallery, Inflated Threat (2007), a 16-panel drawing (each panel is slightly larger than a sheet of legal paper), Dzama embattles an army of cowboys and femmes fatales against a confused mass of masked terrorists. Rendered in a deadpan and rudimentary manner, Dzama infantilizes these terrorist figures, suggesting the physical inanimateness and inflexibility of an action figure (a childhood toy Dzama has often cited as an inspiration). This impotency is echoed in the lack of grip these terrorists have on their weapons. Floating, weightless and out of grasp, the machine guns dangle within reach, but remain futile and without use. Depicting cowboys shooting at the terrorist above, Dzama makes conspicuous parody of George W. Bush’s idealistic postures against global terror. This drawing also demonstrates the evolving strengths in Dzama’s formal inventions. The complex arrangements, spatial patterning and overlapping are evident in the terrorist’s pin wheel-like designs and the subtle foreshortenings in which their bodies bob forwards and backwards on the blank background of the paper.

Just as Dzama’s drawings infantilize violence, his dioramas are at once latently violent and manifestly impotent. In La Verdad está Muerta/ Room Full of Liars(2007) Dzama uses six identical puppets of Pinocchio. This iconic Disney character is depicted with a visage and hairline resembling President  Bush, creating a cabinet of cloned liars as the piece’s title directs. Deploying this fairytale figure also associated with Richard Nixon, Dzama suggests historical connections of the Nixon administration’s prolonged involvement in Vietnam to the present Bush administration’s protracted war on Iraq. These Pinocchios appear sinister in their overstated innocence– in this exaggeration there is also perhaps a similar truth imparted about Bush’s seeming naiveté.

The Underground (2008) is the most overtly political diorama. Three masked figures gripping machine guns surround a squatting female nude. She is inexplicably urinating into a tube that extends below through a tunnel and into the mouth of a suited man sprawled in a burrow. A pipe-smoking dog looks on from an adjacent hole. While the subterranean layer may recall such literary references as Kafka’s “The Burrow,” in the context of the terrorist figures, one may recollect the spider hole in which Saddam Hussein hid before his capture in 2003.

Dzama’s work elicits a myriad of inspirations and connections, but these are not works whose understanding can be achieved by a definitive decoding or deciphering. Like their incongruent sources and inspirations that range from theWhere the Wild Things Are children’s book to Innuit mythologies, the drawings command similar multifaceted and limitless associations. The degree of conceptual sophistication, formal development and self-conscious reference his brand of primitivism has achieved also continues to set his work apart from its inspired imitators as well as the genuinely naïve work of Henry Darger. While Dzama’s work continually references literary and art historical sources, the current political allusions to terrorism are most timely. In these contemporary issues Dzama engages his psychologically complex realm of fantasy with America’s current political landscape, cloaking adult notions of both latent and manifest violence in the beguiling innocence of childhood imagery.

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Daniel Kunitz, Barbara Pollack, and Irving Sandler joined David Cohen to review Laurie Anderson at Sean Kelly, Marcel Dzama at David Zwirner, Bruce Pearson at Ronald Feldman, and Sue Williams at 303.

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