A look at Artist Marcel Dzama

“Marcel Dzama: Rebel With A Cause”

Marcel Dzama is a German artist from Winnipeg, Manitoba that voiced nationalistic sentiment throughout his work. He was born in 1974, making him currently 36 years old, and obtained his Bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts in his hometown. His interest in the arts seems to be widespread considering his involvement in watercolor illustrations, installations, sculptures, collage, assemblage, and even film. This makes Dzama a flexible artist experimenting and utilizing every medium possible to get his message across.

His installation, recently mounted in the Museum of Contemporary Art, named “The Underground” (2008) is constructed out of wood, ceramic, fiberglass, resin, sand, metal, and fabric.  This multi-composited sculpture consists of three scarlet-masked soldiers holding AK-47s behind a squatting nude female. She is seen urinating into the mouth of a suited man underground through a translucent tube. Next to them, sits a pipe-smoking dog in a burrow witnessing the scene. The figures here all share a high degree of primitivism with their cartoonish form.  “The Underground” conveys ideas of birth with the cave representing the womb and the tube symbolizing the umbilical cord nourishing the only well dressed male. The work also depicts ideas of death and war, which seam to be the subjects Dzama is fond of. This is made evident with the combat setting he built and the famous soldiers in the background. Many elements can be deciphered in this image such as a portrayal of political issues, for example the hideout of Saddam Hussein. This sculpture, most importantly, embodies the mythology that one constructs in their thoughts with a childish spin.

“Untitled: Winnipeg Was Won, Winnipeg Was One” is one of Dzama’s illustrations made up of graphite, ink, and watercolor on piano paper. This painting, like his others feature torture scenes, graphic erotic escapades, and carnavalesque ballet dancers. These scenes, although notorious and daring, depict the aesthetically attractive and somewhat choreographed behavior of several figures. His reoccurring characters are delicate and illustrate the artist’s interest in minimalism. Marcel limits his color palette to somber earth tones such as root-beer browns and grey washed navys, and the three values: white, grey, and black with a repeated punch of crimson. This artificially bright pigment depicts themes of war, nostalgia, and even politics. Just like his other pieces shown at the gallery, his concoction is truly instinctive and visceral while dealing with crude and elemental emotions.

Marcel’s work can be compared to a scene in the film “Schindler’s List”. When coming close to his illustrations and paintings, the young Hebrew girl wrapped in a red dress amidst the black and white crowd instantly came to mind. This was also done to attract attention to a singled out character and to remind us of the holocaust’s bloodshed. In Marcel’s case he wishes to make the violence more perceptible by focalizing it.

All things considered, Marcel Dzama is a modernist artist for the reason that he freely expresses himself and creates subjectively with personally selected limitations. He, like many modernists, has blurred the lines between mediums such as sculpture and painting, hence generating his own distinctive style. Dzama instills his knowledge and his “id” in his productions with a juvenile spontaneity that will surely leave a vivid imprint in our minds.