| This round of works by the prolific, Bob Dylan-admiring Canadian artist Marcel Dzama exposes his interest in the political realm, although the artist was quick to point out (in response to a prying journalist’s question) that it is his intention to be oblique rather than dogmatic in his approach to subjects such as the Bush administration and the Iraq War. When asked to what extent his inspiration comes from current events stories in the news, he quipped that some 20 percent arises from this source, thus allotting the other 80 to something else. In fact, the namesake of the show, a diorama entitled Even the Ghosts of the Past, has its radix in a similar work by Marcel Duchamp. | 
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Michael DeNiro
Marcel Dzama’s solo exhibition Even the Ghosts of the Past was on view at David Zwirner, New York in April.
This round of works by the prolific, Bob Dylan-admiring Canadian artist Marcel Dzama exposes his interest in the political realm, although the artist was quick to point out (in response to a prying journalist’s question) that it is his intention to be oblique rather than dogmatic in his approach to subjects such as the Bush administration and the Iraq War. When asked to what extent his inspiration comes from current events stories in the news, he quipped that some 20 percent arises from this source, thus allotting the other 80 to something else. In fact, the namesake of the show, a diorama entitled Even the Ghosts of the Past, has its radix in a similar work by Marcel Duchamp.
Nonetheless, the political nature of several of the show’s works is rather poorly veiled, revealing much about the artist’s feelings of a. frustration, and b. whimsical curiosity regarding the pictorial possibilities of these events. For example, the diorama La Verdad está Muerta (Room Full of Liars) features six Pinocchio-esque hand puppets arranged in two rows like a boys’ choir, revealed to the viewer by drawn curtains. When questioned on the work, Dzama meekly recounted his frustration over the 2004 electoral victory of President Bush, and suggested that we might find a correlation between these wide-eyed liars and that cadre of political ne’er-do-wells. Or take The Underground, another diorama in which three hooded "terrorist" figures stand, guns waving, around a hole in the ground, over which squats a naked woman; in the ground cavity below, a reclining man in a tuxedo imbibes on urine from a tube ascending back up into the woman’s vagina. The image of Saddam Hussein’s "spider-hole," in which he was finally apprehended in December 2003, may have sparked the idea, the artist admitted, but it seems to me a strange translation, in which Saddam becomes a sort of anti-suave James Bond character, nurtured by one of the women who elsewhere play a prominent role in Dzama’s work.
Finally, the quaint Lotus Eaters, whose mythology-laden title seems to have little relation to the anxious physiological tumults of the film itself, contains a curious and vaguely out-of-place scene depicting the decapitation of a bear-like figure by those same hooded "terrorists," which could not help but trigger associations with Jihadist Internet videos such as the one detailing the murder of Daniel Pearl. It is improbable that this could be little more than coincidence. These are only a few examples, and there are, as mentioned above, many works in the show at David Zwirner which bear no attachment to sources other than Dzama’s fruitful imagination. Nonetheless, these works hint at an intelligent insight into issues often deemed too time-centric or prone to kitsch to be handled in a direct manner. While the artist’s maybe-it-is, maybe-it-isn’t presentation is, in fact, not direct, that "20 percent" seems to, at times, leave itself exposed.
