Drawings by Marcel Dzama

Marcel Dzama’s cast of characters are mainly derived from early to mid 20th-century popular culture. People, animals, and plants morph into hybrid forms. They participate in both bizarre and familiar activities. Even though characters and situations reappear, the drawings do not illustrate any specific narrative. Instead, they remain ambiguous fragments.

Dzama combines elements from film genres such as sci-fi, westerns, horror, musicals, and melodramas. His work is also informed by the 20th-century’s obsession with psychosis and paranoia. Fragmented and isolated on the page, the drawings resemble dream sequences and flashbacks, and appear to exist outside the conventional context of time and space.