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- - - - SECTION: What's On; Visual Arts; Pg. E8 LENGTH: 559 words HEADLINE: Marcel Dzama follows accidental path to artistic success SOURCE: Freelance BYLINE: Gilbert Bouchard BODY: Marcel Dzama's "Even More Famous Drawings" Showing at: Latitude 53 Gallery, 10137 104th St. Until: July 20 - - - - Marcel Dzama seems to have it backwards. Aren't you supposed to knock off drawings as studies for your major works or to pawn them off to friends and family? Well, not this red-hot Winnipeg-based drawer. "I do painting on the side, but I don't show them very much. It's mainly presents for relatives and friends," says the 27-year-old artist ,who makes his living selling his quirky dream-inspired, cartoon-like drawings. A showing of Dzama's art -- "Even More Famous Drawings"-- is currently on display at Latitude 53 in downtown Edmonton. "I know it's the opposite of what most people do, but I enjoy drawing a lot more," he says. "It's so intimate." Not that his unorthodox approach has hurt his profile or his pocketbook. Dzama has enjoyed dozens of solo shows since he left the University of Manitoba and currently has two touring shows of his work on display. A series of his drawings was also recently published in Harper's magazine. Selling his drawings for $600 US apiece, Dzama is enjoying a huge following in both New York (selling to "businessmen and publishers") and Los Angeles ("I'm mainly bought by producers and actors.") Celebrities who have bought his work include Jim Carrey and Nicolas Cage, with Steve Martin on line to write the introduction to an upcoming book of drawings, The Berlin Years. Nor can we overlook the fact that one of the touring shows currently criss-crossing Canada was bought lock, stock and packing crates by a duo of Toronto investors. Pretty good for an artistic path taken totally by accident. "When I was taking fine arts at university, I was doing larger work, but I had to live in a hotel for a while after a house fire and I started to do smaller stuff. I was drawing on placemats and hotel stationery. I ended up doing a showing of these smaller works at school which the Plug-in Gallery (a Winnipeg artist-run centre like Latitude 53) was interested in and gave me a show back in 1996." The prolific Dzama produces more than 5,000 drawings a year and boasts a style that's as eccentric as his output is energetic. Known for his creation of a vaguely nostalgic, surreal artistic universe, the soft-spoken artist populates his tight artistic world with anthropomorphic animals, spandex-clad vintage superheros, old-style film cowboys, ray-gun- toting, pulp fiction space-men and the '20s-style flappers. Dzama lists sources as diverse as Jack Kirby (seminal comic book artist), older New Yorker illustrations, and the historical novels he loves to peruse in his joyful mixing of high and low art. "(Yet) I'm more influenced by novels and things I read than illustrations," says the artist, who's still active in the comic-art 'zine' (fan magazine) scene with his Royal Art Lodge collective. "I do occasionally use photographs to draw and I keep a little idea book and flashlight by the side of my bed. I get the best ideas in that twilight land, just before I fall asleep." The biggest irony is that despite his success in the traditional art market, Dzama thinks his art is best suited for publication rather than display. "It does almost better for them to be in book form and they're certainly not living room work and not meant to hang above the sofa." GRAPHIC: Colour Photo: Supplied; A dream-inspired Dzama drawing; Colour Photo: Supplied; Old-style cowboy vs. anthropomorphic animal LOAD-DATE: June 28, 2002 - - - -
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