WEBVTT 00:00:09.780 --> 00:00:13.840 [Marcel Dzama: Organizing Chaos] 00:00:25.360 --> 00:00:27.200 So these costumes are quite old. 00:00:27.200 --> 00:00:27.940 [LAUGHS] 00:00:32.500 --> 00:00:34.640 This one was just a halloween costume. 00:00:34.640 --> 00:00:35.140 [LAUGHS] 00:00:44.280 --> 00:00:46.100 I guess I have a hoarder tendency. 00:00:47.460 --> 00:00:51.040 That was the one thing I didn’t adapt to in being a New Yorker, 00:00:51.050 --> 00:00:57.000 to get rid of things as quickly as your small apartment allows. 00:01:07.060 --> 00:01:09.540 I'm originally from Winnipeg, Canada. 00:01:10.020 --> 00:01:14.220 The winters are quite cold, and last for almost half the year. 00:01:14.760 --> 00:01:16.830 It’s hard to get together to socialize 00:01:16.830 --> 00:01:22.500 because there's this barrier of weather that keeps you isolated. 00:01:24.420 --> 00:01:27.380 I used to color a lot as a kid. 00:01:30.620 --> 00:01:33.520 I would draw a lot of Universal monsters. 00:01:33.520 --> 00:01:36.540 Any of those characters like The Wolfman and Dracula. 00:01:41.220 --> 00:01:44.240 And then created my own world to have something to do. 00:01:53.460 --> 00:01:56.520 The thing with living in Winnipeg is, especially in the winter, 00:01:56.520 --> 00:01:59.990 the horizon and the land just kind of... they just dissolved into each other. 00:01:59.990 --> 00:02:03.190 So you would see this, almost like a blank page. 00:02:03.190 --> 00:02:07.871 And if someone would walk into it, it would look like a blank piece of paper 00:02:07.871 --> 00:02:08.871 with a figure. 00:02:08.880 --> 00:02:13.760 And so I think that really subconsciously influenced my style. 00:02:19.310 --> 00:02:22.640 When I was in art school, I was still living in my parents' place. 00:02:22.650 --> 00:02:27.910 I did have quite a bit of larger works on board from my grandfather's farm. 00:02:27.910 --> 00:02:29.350 He took apart a barn 00:02:29.350 --> 00:02:33.800 and I used a lot of the panels from that and painted on it with house paint. 00:02:35.720 --> 00:02:37.100 Then there was a house fire. 00:02:39.580 --> 00:02:43.300 I basically lost all of my work from the past 00:02:43.300 --> 00:02:45.680 and most of my possessions. 00:02:46.940 --> 00:02:51.019 So, I started drawing on hotel stationery 00:02:51.019 --> 00:02:54.350 and that ended up being my thesis. 00:02:54.350 --> 00:02:56.380 ["The Royal Art Lodge" collaborative work] 00:03:00.900 --> 00:03:03.680 Those were the works that I would start to get known for, 00:03:03.680 --> 00:03:08.980 this isolated background with just a few figures. 00:03:12.400 --> 00:03:16.560 After the house fire there was this real feeling of loss. 00:03:16.560 --> 00:03:19.940 But, on the other hand, there was also this possibility-- 00:03:19.940 --> 00:03:24.500 and, in some ways, also made it easier to move to New York. 00:03:34.480 --> 00:03:38.540 I used to have more of a red and brown palette. 00:03:38.540 --> 00:03:41.360 I'm definitely going through a blue period. 00:03:46.280 --> 00:03:51.060 I did some political work in the Bush years, during the Iraq war. 00:03:51.060 --> 00:03:53.880 In Trump years, I kind of felt like, 00:03:53.880 --> 00:03:59.070 to go to sleep, I needed this exorcism of the news media that I had taken in that day. 00:03:59.070 --> 00:04:01.000 So I needed to get it out. 00:04:09.940 --> 00:04:16.940 --I included the Dada image because they had the disgust of World War I. 00:04:17.420 --> 00:04:23.260 --So I thought it was good timing for the disgust of what’s going on right now [LAUGHS] 00:04:23.260 --> 00:04:25.420 --in our political age. 00:04:26.140 --> 00:04:29.400 --I think it's gotten me in a bit of a downward spiral. 00:04:32.120 --> 00:04:35.300 After the Sandy Hook shooting, I stopped drawing guns. 00:04:35.300 --> 00:04:38.670 And then once Trump got in, I felt like it, 00:04:38.670 --> 00:04:43.680 as some sort of resistance symbol, I brought it back. 00:04:44.780 --> 00:04:47.000 The revolution is going to be female. 00:04:52.860 --> 00:04:53.820 --Switch it up. 00:05:02.620 --> 00:05:07.700 When I moved to New York, I found the work getting much more claustrophobic. 00:05:07.700 --> 00:05:10.160 I wanted to put some sort of order to it. 00:05:10.160 --> 00:05:15.620 I found these old dance magazines and realized I should put them in dance positions. 00:05:16.980 --> 00:05:20.290 That's how I put some organization to the chaos 00:05:20.290 --> 00:05:22.060 of this claustrophobia. 00:05:28.540 --> 00:05:33.260 I even turned a lot of the creatures into costumes for humans. 00:05:33.260 --> 00:05:36.180 I thought of it more as a stage from that point. 00:05:37.580 --> 00:05:41.360 More of a dance element, kind of almost like a Broadway show. 00:05:51.780 --> 00:05:56.400 This has been a few artists that I like to reference in my work quite a bit. 00:05:56.400 --> 00:06:00.520 Duchamp, Goya, William Blake, Picabia-- definitely my heroes. 00:06:00.520 --> 00:06:01.520 [LAUGHS] 00:06:07.420 --> 00:06:11.300 Picabia, had done this ballet, where there was this polka-dotted character. 00:06:11.300 --> 00:06:15.580 That really inspired me to move into more of a polka-dotted direction. 00:06:26.320 --> 00:06:30.080 I did this just after the school shooting in Florida. 00:06:30.090 --> 00:06:33.330 Emma Gonzalez did this really powerful speech 00:06:33.330 --> 00:06:38.580 and Fox News was trying to bring her down with some sort of criticism. 00:06:38.580 --> 00:06:43.600 So, I drew this group of conspiracy theory people 00:06:43.600 --> 00:06:46.320 and this circus surrounding this young lady. 00:06:53.160 --> 00:06:55.380 I start quite late in the studio. 00:06:57.340 --> 00:07:00.220 The more interesting ideas come out of my work 00:07:00.220 --> 00:07:01.490 in that witching hour. 00:07:01.490 --> 00:07:05.640 I feel that's where that world is set-- that I've created. 00:07:09.240 --> 00:07:10.320 There's more of a flow, 00:07:10.320 --> 00:07:16.100 because I have one foot in subconscious and one in reality. 00:07:17.060 --> 00:07:18.860 I try not to censor myself. 00:07:18.860 --> 00:07:22.700 So I just let whatever at the top of my head come out. 00:07:24.310 --> 00:07:26.700 Butterflies have come into the work. 00:07:26.700 --> 00:07:28.440 Moths and different insects. 00:07:30.140 --> 00:07:34.140 I always keep it open to whatever the mood is. 00:07:36.640 --> 00:07:39.680 There's this possibility of anything can happen.