NYAB Event - Christian Marclay “New Paintings and Works on Paper”

Christian Marclay “New Paintings and Works on Paper”

Paula Cooper Gallery "534 W 21 St."

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The Paula Cooper Gallery presents an exhibition of new paintings and works on paper by Christian Marclay.

This new group of works consists of silkscreen on painted backgrounds, featuring onomatopoeias that evoke the sound of painting actions (SPLORCH! SLLURP! WHOOMPH!). Torn from comic book pages, collaged, blown up and printed on canvas and paper, the onomatopoeias extend Marclayʼs investigation into the relationship between sound and image, sampling elements from art and popular culture. As in his music and video works, which splice together found recordings and film footage, the comic book sound effects are recontextualized in vibrant, dynamic compositions. Swirling, acqueous text and color combine mimetic words with puddles and splatters across the surface, conflating the painted and the printed in a surprising mix.

Marclay began silkscreen printing in 2006 for a body of work based on a detail from Andy Warhol’s famous Electric Chair image from his Death and Disaster series. The paintings on view also relate closely to Marclay’s vocal score Manga Scroll (2010), part of a body of work incorporating onomatopoeias clipped from Japanese manga and American comics. Like his earlier graphic scores, which employ non-traditional visualizations of sound as possibilities for generating music, the new works present arrangements of sonic text that interact with the painterly gesture. Chance operation and playful irony underscore Marclay’s Cageian influence as well as an engagement with the history of painting.

Christian Marclay (b. 1955, San Rafael, California) grew up in Geneva, Switzerland. His work has been shown at international venues including the Museum of Modern Art; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C.; Musée d’Art et d’Histoire, Geneva; Kunsthaus Zürich; and Tate Modern, London. In 2011, he received The Golden Lion for his presentation of The Clock at the Venice Biennale. The work has since traveled to numerous venues internationally. In 2010, the Whitney Museum of American Art organized a one-person exhibition titled “Festival.” In 2004, the UCLA Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, organized a midcareer retrospective, which traveled to France, Switzerland, and Great Britain. Marclay lives and works in New York and London.

[Image:Christian Marclay “Actions: Plish Plip! Plap!!! Plop…(No.2)” (2013), screenprint with hand painted acrylic, 37 7⁄8 × 49 in.]