As early as the 1970s, Marclay discovered ‘Fluxus’s humorous relationship to music, the way it made fun of the rituals of classical music.’¹ Drawn to Fluxus, punk rock and performance art, the artist was inspired to start his own band ‘The Bachelors, Even’, which involved unconventional uses of vinyl records. Conceiving of the sonic event in the broadest possible way, Marclay has developed a longstanding fascination with the relationship between image and sound. In 1988, the artist photographed the 45 RPM vinyl single of a popular song by Simon and Garfunkel, titling the image The Sound of Silence. That same year, Marclay also created Secret, a metal ‘mother’ disc with a heavy-duty padlock secured through its centre, a visual paradox that riffs, in part, on Marcel Duchamp’s enigmatic 1916 sculpture With Hidden Noise (À bruit secret). Through the late 1980s and 90s, Marclay made ‘Imaginary Records’ – collages comprised of altered record covers, which sought to conjure imaginary music.

Marclay’s new projects are ‘almost photographic’ in nature.² To produce the monotypes, the artist applies ink directly to the card jackets and paper sleeves of records, before passing them through a roller press to generate a unique impression. This printing technique transfers the ink traces of the record packaging onto the paper’s surface as a ‘ghost image’. Variations in the original record cover designs are inflected in the resulting print, with details such as the absorbency of the paper, or which areas are coated with gloss finish, affecting what ‘information’ is registered in the moment of transfer. As Marclay observes, the object’s signs of wear and tear are also conveyed, with its folds, creases and marks becoming arbiters of meaning in their own right. His attention to this minor lexicon of use and loving traces reflects on the record’s ability to capture what could otherwise be lost to time, but equally, a symbol of memory’s impermanence and the certainty of material deterioration.

The simple, descriptive titles of Marclay’s series ‘Sleeves and Covers’ exist to mark their place in a wider set or catalogue, echoing the numbered opuses that index works of classical music. Though firstly functional, the titles also enumerate the artist’s trials and errors, the logic of the sequence upturned where iterations may have been drafted or discarded. The artist’s use of 7”, 10” and 12” records meanwhile speaks to both the duration of play and changing tastes. In Sleeves and Covers (Nine 10” / No 45) for example, nine 10” record sleeves are arranged in a grid; their spare, typographical designs point to a time when marketing a record through the musician’s likeness or image was not yet popular strategy. That Marclay’s monotypes employ three different vinyl formats gestures towards the visual and sonic cultures of bygone decades, as well as the waning demand or obsolescence of certain technological forms. However, as the artist notes, renewed enthusiasm for 12” vinyl today suggests that the ethereal pleasure of music remains tethered to material form.

‘Chance operations’ are as integral to Marclay’s ‘Oculi’ series as they are to the monotypes, yet they engage striking parallels and divergences when shown alongside. Unlike the impressions, the ‘Oculi’ works are assisted readymades that take as their starting point the found records themselves. Using the 12” sleeves’ circular apertures – originally cut to reveal the record label – as a framing device, the artist overlays the sleeves on record covers, isolating details of the imagery beneath. The sleeve is transformed from protective packaging into a compositional tool, or even a viewfinder, staging fragments of hands, eyes and mouths through acts of selection and concealment. Reflecting on the simplicity of this intervention – it’s lack of ‘editing process’ – Marclay also notes the imperfect superimposition: the spillover of the minutely larger record cover that creates a border around the sleeve.

The typological groupings of ‘Oculi’ harness repetition to show universality and accentuate difference. In Oculi (Listening Men), six record sleeves and covers have been assembled in a single row, their apertures encircle the closed eyes of six men, lost in a music the viewer cannot hear. Their closed eyes signal their immersion in sound, one that requires a wilful separation of the senses – an expression of concentrated listening that appears as both mysterious absenteeism and knowing performativity. ‘A silent representation of sound, as in painting or sculpture, intrigues me because its muteness underscores sound’s intangible nature,’ the artist has noted. ‘The image becomes instead the representation of an absence.’³ Elsewhere, the records of Oculi (Sunsets) are also organised in a horizontal line, but instead invoke a filmic sequence or tonal scale, the windows of their colour-matched sleeves framing the spectral ombré of seven gradually setting suns. With the trope of the sunset, Marclay makes an overt reference to the passage of time while invoking a private, potentially sentimental, soundtrack in its beholder.

Marclay’s practice engages with the sonic event in all its permutations and, understanding the ‘recording studio as an instrument’⁴ in its own right, the artist treats the vinyl record and its imagery by extension as a total work of art. Foregrounding the tactile histories of the objects, his new monotypes and collages combine ‘chance operations’ and formal, compositional rules to consider the record as cultural and commercial artefact. A reflection on the passage of time and sound as a carrier of memory, these works speak of our persistent efforts to capture the ineffable by way of making record.

Christian Marclay was born in California in 1955, raised in Switzerland and lives and works in London. He has exhibited widely, including solo exhibitions at Brooklyn Museum, New York (2025); Centre Pompidou, Paris (2022); Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Geneva (2020); Los Angeles County Museum of Art, California (2019); Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona, Spain (2019); Sapporo Art Museum, Japan (2017); Rencontres Internationales de la Photographie, Arles, France (2016); Aargauer Kunsthaus, Aarau, Switzerland (2015); Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart, Germany (2015); Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2012); Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2010); Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art, Seoul (2010); MoMA PS1, New York (2009); Cité de la Musique, Paris (2007); Australian Centre for the Moving Image, Melbourne (2007); Moderna Museet, Stockholm (2006); Barbican Art Gallery, London (2005); and Tate Modern, London (2004).

Marclay was awarded the Golden Lion at the 54th Venice Biennale (2011) for ‘The Clock’. Solo presentations of ‘The Clock’ have included LACMA, Los Angeles (2026); Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin (2025); ICA, Boston (2025); MoMA, New York (2024); LUMA Foundation, Arles (2021); Australian Centre for the Moving Image, Melbourne (2019); Tate Modern, London (2018); Instituto Moreira Salles, São Paulo (2017); Copenhagen Contemporary (2017); Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (2016); Contemporary Arts Centre, New Orleans (2016); Walker Art Centre, Minneapolis (2014); SALT Beyoğlu, Istanbul (2014); Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris (2014); Guggenheim Bilbao, Spain (2014); San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2012); Ruhrtriennale, Bochum, Germany (2012); Los Angeles County Museum of Art (2011).

Selected group exhibitions include Jeu de Paume, Paris (2025); Photo Elysée, Lausanne (2024); Kanal - Centre Pompidou, Brussels (2020); 58th Venice Biennale (2019); National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne (2018); Museum Tinguely, Basel, Switzerland (2017); Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston (2016); Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2015); Fotomuseum Winterthur and Albertina, Vienna (2014); Fondazione Prada, Venice (2014); Konsthall Artipelag, Gustavsberg, Sweden (2013); Hirschhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC (2013); Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, UK (2012); Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt, Germany (2012); The Menil Collection, Houston (2012); and Hayward Gallery, London (2011). Marclay also continues to collaborate with musicians including recent performances with Steve Beresford, Okkyung Lee, Shelley Hirsch and Otomo Yoshihide.

1. Christian Marclay in conversation with Jeffrey Fraenkel, 2026, Fraenkel Gallery, online

2. Unpublished conversations, August 2026

3. Christian Marclay, ‘Le son en images’, in Peter Szendy (ed.), L’Écoute, L’Harmattan and IRCAM – Centre Pompidou, 2000

4. Unpublished conversations, August 2026