IS ANYBODY REALLY THERE?
Marlene Dumas’ summer show at David Zwirner gives great pleasure. These are paintings, scenes that would be impossible to execute, and even imagine, in any
other medium. Although some are rendered in oil, some in acrylic and some in ink wash,
all have the lyrical rush of watercolors, with loose brushstroke and color that seeps into the
field.
Dumas paints commandingly. Different pieces, at
different moments, recall Edvard Munch, Francis Bacon and Francesco Clemente.
They vary in quality. Some are inescapable, monumental; others feel like
sketches completed on deadline for the show’s opening.
Most of the paintings are portraits. About a dozen are full-size canvases
showing figures head-to-toe, and dozens more are on small sheets of paper showing
faces and other body parts. Many of them feel as if they capture a real
person. There are flashes of particularity and eccentricity in individual faces (a gasp, a sneer, an
awkward smile) and figures (arms crossed, lips parted, legs akimbo). And yet the softened brushwork lends them all a fleeting immateriality. Dumas seems to render her subjects after observation but gets at something else. These people feel bodiless, weightless, effectless, like
figments from personal memory or poorly-remembered dreams. Like the paintings themselves, it’s the spiritual rather than the physical in them that allures.
Marlene Dumas, Omega’s eyes, 2018, Oil on canvas, 23 5/8 x 19 ¾ inches (60 x 50 cm). Courtesy of the artist and David Zwirner Gallery.