MARCEL DZAMA

Dzama’s latest works expand on the tropical, oceanic, and celestial imagery and themes that he has been exploring over the last several years in his art. Inspired, in part, by John Milton’s epic poem Paradise Lost, these new works feature costumed figures and anthropomorphised animals dancing and lounging around in lush, vibrantly coloured natural settings with large, grinning moons and shimmering stars and comets looming above. Many of the works show figures partially submerged within endless expanses of waist-high water. These waterscapes appear like scenes from a surreal aquatic ballet. At the same time, like an ominous but beautiful visual allegory, their never-ending waterlines seem to portend the continued degradation of the natural world.

This will be the artist’s twelfth solo exhibition at David Zwirner since joining the gallery in 1998, and his third at the London space following his 2013 exhibition Puppets, Pawns, and Prophets and his joint presentation with Raymond Pettibon, Let us compare mythologies, in 2016.

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