Fraenkel Gallery is pleased to present new work by Christian Marclay, incorporating collage, video animation, and photography. The exhibition continues Marclay’s investigation into the relationship between sound and image through sampling elements from art and popular culture, and reflects the anxiety and frustration of the current global pandemic and political crises. The exhibition will be on view in the gallery from January 21 to March 25, 2021.

We are pleased to present a virtual performance of No!, in which Marclay’s collage serves as a score, starring vocalist Elaine Mitchener. The performance will premiere on this page Thursday, March 4th at 10am PT / 1pm ET / 6pm GMT.⁠ No registration necessary (an email reminder will be sent to the address used to access this viewing room).

The gallery is currently open by appointment. Click here to plan your visit.

The voice is at the center of the exhibition. In a series of photographs showing screaming faces, cut and torn fragments from comic books, movie stills, and images found on the internet are arranged into haunting, mask-like composites, and then recorded by the camera. Capturing the paper’s inherent creases and tears, the photographs mix analog and digital elements, and investigate the computer screen as a contemporary physical surface.

Flames are also the subject of Raging Fire, 2020, a large collage made of paper cutouts from comic book illustrations of fire. The piece transforms representations of all manner of war, catastrophe, explosion, and arson into abstracted yellows, oranges, and reds in a variety of styles.

Also on view will be No!, 2019, a suite of 15 original collages made from comic book fragments. Conceived as a graphic score for a solo voice, these original collages were scanned and made into an edition to be used by performers. While earlier works such as Manga Scroll, 2010, incorporated onomatopoeias disconnected from their generative action, No! uses vocal utterances, facial expressions, and body movements to prompt a performance.

Writes Marclay, “Like my earlier graphic scores dating back to the 1990s, the use of words that illustrate their sonic counterparts engages non-traditional visualizations of sound as a possibility for generating music.” As in his music and video works, which splice together found recordings and film footage, the comic book segments are culled and recontextualized in vibrant, dynamic ways.