Marcel Dzama

A rare & rather wide selection of Marcel Dzama’s books is gracing our window this month. Dzama - Canadian born, internationally renowned & Brooklyn based – happily coveted a certain catalogue raisonee in our window. A trading deal was struck and we ended up with, among other things, copies of the artist’s own books, exhibition catalogs and Royal Art Lodge material, all bearing Dzama’s signature accompanied by a fanciful  illustration.

The selection includes some scarce exhibition catalogs from Zwirner Gallery in New York, Timothy Taylor in London, Ikon in Brmingham and Sies + Höke in Düsseldorf.  

Dzama’s hallucinatory world is idiosyncratic, almost solipsistic. It’s trippy, morbid, violent, but primarily funny.

 His organic subjects, part human, part beasts, part trees, moving in naturally decorative  surroundings, hellish background or blank space, wielding guns and shedding blood, combine a child-like pastoral & naive style with a world weary cynicism.

Among the collection we also got Dzama’s republication of another Marcel – Duchamp’s Opposition and Sister Squares Reconciled (Salon Verlag, 2011). A semi-forgotten work designated as a chess book for artists and an artbook for chess players.

Anyone who meets Dzama in person notes with surprise his quiet demeanor and his human warmth.  Is it his work or his success that makes one expect anything different? – We are proud and lucky to have him among our patrons.