Press Release: Marcel Dzama

07.01.98

In The Hudson (Show)Room

Marcel Dzama

WINNIPEG, CANADA

Exhibition: July 9 ?ptember 13, 1998

ArtPace, A Foundation for Contemporary Art | San Antonio is pleased to present a
site-specific installation by Canadian artist Marcel Dzama in The Hudson (Show)Room.
The exhibition marks a change in the exhibition format for the Hudson (Show)Room,
expanding the program beyond Texas to include U.S. and international emerging artists.

Marcel Dzama was born in 1974 in Winnipeg, Canada, where he lives and works.
Dzama received his B.F.A. in 1997 from the University of Manitoba. Since graduating,
Dzama has been included in numerous group shows at venues including the Plug In
Gallery, an alternative space in Winnipeg, and The Drawing Center in New York. In
1998, he had critically acclaimed solo shows at Richard Heller Gallery in Los Angeles,
and David Zwirner Gallery in New York. He is a member of the collaborative art team,
The Royal Art Lodge and plays in the band Albatross.

Dzama's small, quirky drawings have caught the attention of many in the
international art world over the past year. Los Angeles Times critic David Pagel
described Dzama's work as "simultaneously sweet and demented." Dzama's quirky
cartoon-like drawings extend the trend in contemporary drawing of examining social
narrative, exemplified by Mike Kelley, Raymond Pettibon and the late Martin
Kippenberger.

At ArtPace, Dzama has wallpapered the gallery with hundreds of his signature page-
size drawings, noted for their disconnected narratives and psychological tension. Dzama
depicts a world of isolated adults with glazed-over expressions interacting with other
figures or forms in space. The images merge children's sensibility with adult
culture?ocent situations charged with sexuality and violence.

Like many artists of his generation, Dzama approaches his work with a dark sense of
humor and a savvy vocabulary of contemporary media culture. The non-linear
arrangement of the drawings recalls the experience of "channel-surfing" while watching
television?ast paced barrage of images, all linked by their flatness and uniformity.
The combination of the rhythm of the installation with the illustrative precision of the
artist's hand heightens the disturbing visual experience of reading the stunted narratives
and experiences of the drawing's subjects.

445 North Main Avenue San Antonio TX 78205 t 210 212 4900 f 210 212 4990 www.artpace.org