Ghosts of Canoe Lake: New Work by Marcel Dzama
June 27 - October 27, 2024
Marcel Dzama is one of Canada’s most intriguing contemporary artists, an artist who works in myriad media that draws from folk vernacular as well as from art historical and contemporary influences. Originally from Winnipeg, where he entered the art world as a founder of the famous Royal Art Lodge (once dubbed the new Group of Seven by a zealous journalist), Dzama moved to New York in 2004, where he’s continued to evolve a visual language that investigates the blurred relationship between the real and the subconscious.
This exhibition marks Dzama’s return to the Canadian institutional scene after more than a decade with a new body of work inspired by the occasion. The artist revisits themes of landscape drawn from Canadian art history and his own memories of a childhood spent in the wilds of Manitoba and northern Saskatchewan—all while confronting a natural world threatened by climate change. Tom Thomson and the Group of Seven come in for special attention, as Dzama plays with the legacies of the landscape painters who came before him. Also central to the exhibition is the film To Live on the Moon (For Lorca), commissioned for the Performa Biennale, New York, 2023.
This exhibition was co-organized by Contemporary Calgary and the McMichael Canadian Art Collection.
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About the Artist
Marcel Dzama (he/him)
Since rising to prominence in the late 1990s, Marcel Dzama (b. 1974) has developed an immediately recognizable visual language that draws from folk vernacular, art-historical, and contemporary influences.
Born in Winnipeg, Canada, Dzama received his BFA in 1997 from the University of Manitoba. Since 1998, his work has been represented by David Zwirner. He has exhibited widely throughout the United States and abroad. In November 2023, Dzama presented To Live on the Moon (For Lorca) a film and performance commissioned by Performa as part of Performa Biennial 2023. Recent solo exhibitions by the artist include Marcel Dzama: Viviendo en el limbo y soñando con el paraíso at the Museo de Arte de Zapopan (MAZ), Mexico, in 2022; Marcel Dzama: An End to the End Times at the Savannah College of Art and Design Museum of Art, Georgia, in 2021; and Marcel Dzama: Tonight We Dance at the Sara Hildén Art Museum in Tampere, Finland, in 2021.
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