MARCEL DZAMA

In the next month, David Zwirner Online will present an expanded program of online exhibitions so that our global audience can continue to explore the work of our artists during the temporary closure of our galleries due to the global health crisis.

Opening April 10, David Zwirner Online will present Harold Ancart: Pools. This online-only exhibition will feature sculptures by the Belgian artist Harold Ancart. These works are derived from the vernacular architectural structures of swimming pools, and also reference the work of Josef Albers, Jo Baer, Richard Diebenkorn, Peter Halley, and David Hockney, among other art historical, architectural, and everyday influences. These three-dimensional relief forms are constructed from styrofoam remnants from the artist’s studio, cast in concrete, and painted with rich layers and fields of colour, bearing the traces of their making and engaging in dualities such as positive and negative space, form and surface, and sculpture and painting. The series, begun in the summer of 2017 in reaction to the hot weather, offered the artist a means to explore, within the constraints of the ordinary format of the pool, the endless possibilities of form and colour. As Ancart has said about the series, ‘Their compositions are fairly simple. The “basin” can have any size and take any shape, so can the “staircases,” and the colour, well, the colour can be anything too. Soon enough I realised that the realm of possibilities was infinite, so I decided to make more...’

On April 23, David Zwirner Online will launch Marcel Dzama: Pink Moon. These new, never-before-seen drawings by Marcel Dzama were inspired by the artist’s travels and include works from his journeys in Morocco, where he visited Tangiers, Essaouira, Chefchaouen (a town nestled in the Rif Mountains), Fez, Beni Mellal and its Berber culture, Marrakech, and the Agafay Desert. The drawings are part of a group of works Dzama created for a forthcoming monograph from Louis Vuitton’s Travel Book Series, which will be published in the spring. ‘For this project, I tried to offer a balance between the representation and the reality of what I saw,’ says Dzama, ‘all the while moving it toward abstraction or perhaps a touch of surrealism.’ In addition to these works, this presentation will include drawings from Dzama’s recent trip to Mexico, which incorporate edenic visions of the country’s tropical forests mixed with personal imagery and exotic animals. Dzama conceived of the title for this presentation upon viewing the recent first full moon of spring—a celestial symbol of renewal, human aspiration, and our romantic desire for adventure and travel. The launch of Marcel Dzama: Pink Moon will be accompanied by a colouring book of the artist’s work, Colouring the Moon Pink, available for download on davidzwirner.com.

About David Zwirner Online

David Zwirner Online is the gallery’s online destination, where visitors can explore and collect works from curated, online-only exhibitions by gallery artists and special collaborations. Since launching in 2017 as the first online viewing room from a commercial gallery, David Zwirner Online has evolved into a seventh gallery space, distinguished by its curatorial approach (an extension of the gallery’s global program, with a constantly rotating program of presentations), the caliber of works (many of which come directly from artists studios), transparency (every viewing room shows pricing and availability), and artist involvement (gallery artists and estates are closely involved in conceptualising the online viewing rooms). In 2019, the gallery presented eighteen online viewing rooms, including a new series dedicated to presentations of significant works in parallel with key moments on the art-fair calendar.