PARIS.- David Zwirner is presenting Blue Moon of Morocco, featuring new and recent work by Marcel Dzama, on view at the gallery’s Paris location. The exhibition includes collages and drawings by the artist that were inspired by his travels in Morocco.

Travel has become increasingly important in Dzama’s art, as he seeks to create works informed by both the distinctive cultures he has immersed himself in and his own subjective experiences. In 2018, invited by Louis Vuitton Editions to create a Travel Book, Dzama traveled to Morocco, visiting cities, seaside towns, mountainous villages, and desert communities. He charted a path that included stops in Tangier, Essaouira, Chefchaouen, Fez, Beni Mellal, Marrakech, and the Agafay Desert. Initially developed while traveling, and then further refined back in the artist’s studio, these drawings are a testament to the power of Dzama’s immediate experiences and the added perspective of personal reflection after he’d returned home. As the artist notes, “I drew countless sketches in situ, all in a spirit of immediacy...and I used them in my work on the drawings after returning home to the United States….I knew I would find the ornamentation used on fabric or rugs captivating, particularly in connection with my own work on motifs and costumes.”1 Depictions of ornate textiles from local bazaars, camels framed against vast swaths of arid desert, and men and women in striped and patterned djellabas going about their daily lives, among other evocative imagery, illustrate the richness of Moroccan history and culture and provide a vivid account of the artist’s individual encounters. As Allison Young notes about Dzama’s recent travel-inspired art, “The vibrant drawings remind us of what’s ‘out there’ and lure us through the realms of dreams, imagination, and memory—no passport...needed.”2




Many of the drawings that will be on view are reproduced in Marcel Dzama: Morocco, a recently released monograph from Louis Vuitton’s Travel Book series. The exhibition will also feature a group of new drawings, created in June 2020 in New York, that display the lasting influence of the artist’s time in Morocco on his art. They expand on the imagery included in his recent online-only exhibition Pink Moon, presented by David Zwirner Online in spring 2020.

Marcel Dzama was born in 1974 in Winnipeg, Canada, where he received his BFA in 1997 from the University of Manitoba. This will be his tenth solo exhibition at David Zwirner since joining the gallery in 1998.

Dzama has exhibited widely in solo and group presentations throughout the United States and abroad. In 2018, the solo exhibition Ya es hora was presented at Galería Helga de Alvear in Madrid and A Jester’s Dance was shown at University of Michigan Museum of Art in Ann Arbor, Michigan. In 2017, La Casa Encendida in Madrid exhibited , a solo show of the artist’s work. In 2015, the artist’s film was presented alongside related two- and three-dimensional work in a solo show at the World Chess Hall of Fame in St. Louis. In 2010, a major survey of the artist's work was held at the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal in Montreal.

Other solo exhibitions include those organized by Kunstmuseum Thun, Switzerland (2014); Galería Helga de Alvear, Madrid (2013); Centro de Arte Contemporáneo de Málaga, Spain (2012); Museo de Arte de Zapopan (MAZ), Zapopan, Mexico (2012); World Chess Hall of Fame and Museum, St. Louis (2012); Gemeentemuseum, The Hague (2011); Kunstverein Braunschweig, Germany (2011); Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich (2008); Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, England (2006); and Le Magasin – Centre National d’Art Contemporain de Grenoble, France (2005).

Work by the artist is held in museum collections worldwide, including the Dallas Museum of Art; Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal; The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Tate Gallery, London; and the Vancouver Art Gallery. Dzama lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.

1Marcel Dzama cited in Marcel Dzama: Morocco, Louis Vuitton Travel Book, n.p.
2Allison Young, “Marcel Dzama,” Artforum.com (May 8, 2020).