Enchanting world of a playful surrealist
Through a peephole in a window of the Timothy Taylor Gallery, a hairy face grins at you.
Enter, and you discover it's attached to a wolf man in a pinstripe suit, fuzzy felt claws gripping the window frame.
It's just one of the merrily macabre, well-dressed characters you'll meet wandering through the enchanting world of playful surrealist Marcel Dzama.
Ever since childhood, Dzama has been obsessed with his cast of bird-headed beasts, superheroes, rifle-toting femmes fatales and cowboys that have echoes of Max Ernst.
His delicate line illustrations of these beings on the gallery walls have a colouring bookstyle faux-innocence.
But this 30-year-old Canadian-born artist has an imagination that's unmistakably his own.
His magically inventive silent short The Lotus Eaters - showing here in a tiny cinema, accompanied by a tinkling pianola - is a flickering mix of Mad Hatter's Tea Party and 1919 German Expressionist horror movie The Cabinet Of Dr Caligari.
A cautionary tale of an artist who topples into a fantasy world after being driven insane by the death of his wife, it encapsulates the perilous mix of fantasy and reality that's the darker side of Dzama's work.
His characters are charged with such fully formed personalities it's hard to believe the furry, chimney-stack-necked gentleman with the sewn-on eyes in the cinema seat next to you isn't going to start a conversation - or strangle you with his paws.
Until Apr 13, Timothy Taylor Gallery, Dering Street W1, Mon to Fri 10am to 6pm, Sat 10am to 1pm, free. Tel: 020 7409 3344. Tube: Bond Street
Marcel Dzama
Timothy Taylor Gallery
Dering Street W1
