CHRISTIAN MARCLAY, THE ARTIST KNOWN FOR HIS THOUGHT-PROVOKING VIDEO COLLAGES, WILL BE HONORED THIS YEAR AT ANDERSON RANCH IN SNOWMASS.
Artist Christian Marclay, shown here in England’s Huddersfield Town Hall, will be honored this summer at Anderson Ranch Arts Center. PHOTO BY @ANDYHASLAMPHOTO/COURTESY OF PAULA COOPER GALLERY, NEW YORK
BORN IN CALIFORNIA, raised in Switzerland and living in London, multimedia artist Christian Marclay will be in Snowmass this summer to accept Anderson Ranch Arts Center’s (andersonranch.org) International Artist Award. As the 26th honoree, Marclay joins an illustrious group of past recipients, including Yinka Shonibare, Simone Leigh, Ai Weiwei, Carrie Mae Weems and Frank Stella. The international award is given to globally recognized artists whose achievements have fundamentally influenced contemporary art. Marclay has a long career of doing just that. He earned international acclaim for his masterpiece video work “The Clock” (2010), a 24-hour compilation of film clips that explores the notion of time, with clock imagery synchronized to align with the actual time where the piece is being viewed. For the work, Marclay won the prestigious Golden Lion award at the 2011 Venice Biennale. Later that year, Newsweek named Marclay one of “the 10 most important artists of today,” calling him “the Picasso of the moving image, the Leonardo of sound.”
Marclay’s work explores the intersection of vision and sound, using photography, film, performance, collage, painting and sculpture. He cuts and pastes images and sounds to create something new. It’s deconstruction and construction. As an art student in the 1970s, Marclay moved from Switzerland to Boston to New York. Though not a musician, he started a punk band in 1979, and in place of a drummer, Marclay used skipping records to emulate the rhythm track of a drum beat. Embracing the clicks and clacks of damaged vinyl records he found in thrift stores, he created a new form of music by re-imagining an old medium. Today, Marclay is credited as one of the inventors of “turntablism,” a staple of modern hip hop.
Christian Marclay, “Scream (Big Mouth Sliced)” (2019, color woodcut on 190 gsm Saunders Waterford hot press paper), 71 3/8 inches by 48 inches (image). PHOTO BY STEVEN PROBERT/COURTESY OF PAULA COOPER GALLERY, NEW YORK
Marclay’s video installations have centered around themes from guns to doors to war movies. He’s done stop-motion animation of chewing gum blobs. And in “Guitar Drag” (2000), he filmed an amplified Fender Stratocaster being dragged for 13 minutes behind a pickup truck on a rural road, a terrifying artistic metaphor and testament to James Byrd, the 49-year-old Black man who had been dragged to death by white supremacists in Jasper, Texas, two years earlier.
In collaboration with Celine by Hedi Slimane, the designer transformed patterns from Marclay’s onomatopoeia-inspired collages into printed, sequined and embroidered fabrics. In turn, the artist created a folio of photographs zoomed in to show the richness and texture of the clothing. “Cropping can make something more abstract and mysterious, and opens up the imagination,” Marclay told Alexander Fury in a 2019 interview for Another magazine.
Christian Marclay, “48 War Movies” (2019, still of single-channel video installation, color and stereo sound, continuous loop), dimensions variable. PHOTO COURTESY OF PAULA COOPER GALLERY, NEW YORK
Recently exhibited in Paris at Centre Pompidou, Marclay’s “Doors” (2022) is a video collage of doors opening and closing that the artist describes as “a mental labyrinth.” “I think doors are interesting because they’re full of potential,” Marclay recently told Charlotte Kent of the Brooklyn Rail.“You don’t know what’s behind that door and where you’re going to end up. There’s fear and uncertainty, definitely. But there’s potential.” Marclay also transformed the iconic facade of the Pompidou into a virtual musical instrument through an interactive augmented reality experience that visitors could access through Snapchat. “It was a way to show people that any noise can be turned into music and that their phone is not only a camera but a portal to a virtual world,” Marclay told Kent.
Photography by:
