Marcel Dzama: Organizing Chaos | Art21 "Extended Play"

[Marcel Dzama: Organizing Chaos]

So these costumes are quite old.

[LAUGHS]

This one was just a halloween costume.

[LAUGHS]

I guess I have a hoarder tendency.

That was the one thing I didn’t adapt to
in being a New Yorker,

to get rid of things as quickly
as your small apartment allows.

I'm originally from Winnipeg, Canada.

The winters are quite cold,
and last for almost half the year.

It’s hard to get together to socialize

because there's this barrier of weather
that keeps you isolated.

I used to color a lot as a kid.

I would draw a lot of Universal monsters.

Any of those characters
like The Wolfman and Dracula.

And then created my own world
to have something to do.

The thing with living in Winnipeg is,
especially in the winter,

the horizon and the land just kind of...
they just dissolved into each other.

So you would see this,
almost like a blank page.

And if someone would walk into it,
it would look like a blank piece of paper

with a figure.

And so I think that really
subconsciously influenced my style.

When I was in art school,
I was still living in my parents' place.

I did have quite a bit of larger works
on board from my grandfather's farm.

He took apart a barn

and I used a lot of the panels from that
and painted on it with house paint.

Then there was a house fire.

I basically lost all of my work from the past

and most of my possessions.

So, I started drawing on hotel stationery

and that ended up being my thesis.

["The Royal Art Lodge" collaborative work]

Those were the works that
I would start to get known for,

this isolated background
with just a few figures.

After the house fire there was
this real feeling of loss.

But, on the other hand,
there was also this possibility--

and, in some ways, also made it easier
to move to New York.

I used to have more of a red and brown palette.

I'm definitely going through a blue period.

I did some political work in the Bush years,
during the Iraq war.

In Trump years, I kind of felt like,

to go to sleep, I needed this exorcism of
the news media that I had taken in that day.

So I needed to get it out.

--I included the Dada image because
they had the disgust of World War I.

--So I thought it was good timing for the
disgust of what’s going on right now [LAUGHS]

--in our political age.

--I think it's gotten me in a
bit of a downward spiral.

After the Sandy Hook shooting,
I stopped drawing guns.

And then once Trump got in, I felt like it,

as some sort of resistance symbol,
I brought it back.

The revolution is going to be female.

--Switch it up.

When I moved to New York,
I found the work getting much more claustrophobic.

I wanted to put some sort of order to it.

I found these old dance magazines and
realized I should put them in dance positions.

That's how I put some
organization to the chaos

of this claustrophobia.

I even turned a lot of the creatures
into costumes for humans.

I thought of it more as a stage
from that point.

More of a dance element,
kind of almost like a Broadway show.

This has been a few artists that I like to
reference in my work quite a bit.

Duchamp, Goya, William Blake, Picabia--
definitely my heroes.

[LAUGHS]

Picabia, had done this ballet,
where there was this polka-dotted character.

That really inspired me to move into
more of a polka-dotted direction.

I did this just after the school shooting
in Florida.

Emma Gonzalez did this really powerful speech

and Fox News was trying to bring her down
with some sort of criticism.

So, I drew this group of
conspiracy theory people

and this circus surrounding this young lady.

I start quite late in the studio.

The more interesting ideas
come out of my work

in that witching hour.

I feel that's where that world is set--
that I've created.

There's more of a flow,

because I have one foot in subconscious
and one in reality.

I try not to censor myself.

So I just let whatever at the top of my head
come out.

Butterflies have come into the work.

Moths and different insects.

I always keep it open to
whatever the mood is.

There's this possibility of
anything can happen.