Christian
Marclay
Making exploration of the link between sound and vision the heart of his practice, for over 40 years, in addition to improvised performances Christian Marclay has brought forth a treasure trove of idiosyncratic videos, paintings, photographs, prints and more, for which he employs techniques such as collage and sampling to reconfigure a variety of found materials.
In 1979 Marclay hit the spotlight as an early adopter of the turntable as a musical instrument. Following a first visit to Japan in 1986, in 1996 his work Amplification (Tokyo) featuring photographs of people playing music transferred onto a large piece of gauze, was installed permanently in the foyer of Tokyo Opera City. In a 2001 exhibition at Gallery Koyanagi, Marclay’s first solo outing in Japan, he presented the video Guitar Drag, which tracks the cacophonous destruction of an electric guitar being pulled behind a pickup truck; a work conceived in response to a racist lynching perpetrated in the United States in 1998.
Marclay’s best-known work The Clock (2010) is an epic 24-hour video comprising a montage of clips from thousands of films, each showing a timepiece, or mentioning time. Screening is synchronized with the actual time at the screening location, enabling visitors to experience the unfolding footage and sound within time’s accurate accumulation. At the same time this also engenders a feel for the odd elasticity and emptiness of time, through the intricate interplay of the illusions woven into the video montage with reality. Winner of a Golden Lion at the 2011 Venice Biennale, The Clock was screened in its entirety the same year at the Yokohama Triennale.
Marclay also employs collage techniques in a series featuring onomatopoeia from comics, combining what could be described as visual sound effects with vibrantly colored patterns, in hanging scroll form (2011). In these works, picked up early by Gallery Koyanagi, representations of the sounds of ripping, friction and so on can be found translated into noisy “sounds” via the visual information of written text.
Meanwhile, in Manga Scroll (2010), examples of onomatopoeia from Japanese manga translated in the United States are joined in the manner of an extended picture scroll. Here too, the dynamism of illustration and sound and their inseparability are presented unadorned. The black-and-white text unfolding horizontally also functions as a graphic score, that performers were given the opportunity to present as vocals.
In a major 2021 solo show at the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, Marclay unveiled the “face” series (2020). At the height of the pandemic, the artist beavered away quietly in isolation, making collages that transform onomatopoeia from comic books into screaming faces. Wide-open eyes and mouths occupy the center of the paper like proxies for the fear and unease of the depressed, with onomatopoeia resembling impudent, obtrusive noise swarming around. The sight of so many different stimuli integrated in a single whole, converging on the picture plane into a unique bodily sensation, simultaneously embodies the harmony and rivalry between sound and art.
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In 2011, he won the Golden Lion at the 54th Venice Biennale for his work "The Clock." He had solo exhibitions at Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2003); Tate Modern, London (2004); Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden (2006); Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2010); Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2012); Aargauer Kunsthaus, Aarau, Switzerland (2015); Los Angeles County Museum of Art (2019); Museum of Contemporary Art Barcelona, Spain (2019); Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Genève (2020); Centre Pompidou, Paris (2022-23). In Japan, he had a large-scale solo exhibition in 2021 with Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo “Christian Marclay Translating.”
BIOGRAPHY
1955Born in San Rafael, California
1975-77Ecole Supérieure d’Arts Visuels, Geneva
1977-80Bachelor of Fine Arts, Massachusetts College of Art, Boston
1978Exchange student program, Cooper Union, New York
Lives and works in London
Selected Solo Exhibitions, Performances
2025Doors, Brooklyn museum, New York
The Clock, National Gallery of Iceland, Reykjavik
Doors, ICA Boston, MA
The Clock, Kunstmuseum Stuttgart, Germany
2024The Clock, MoMA, New York
Subtitled, Paula Cooper Gallery, New York
2023Graphic Scores, Fundación Proa, Buenos Aires, Argentina
Doors, White Cube Mason’s Yard, London
2022Christian Marclay, Centre Pompidou, Paris
2021Found in Odawara, Enoura Observatory, Odawara Art Foundation, Kanagawa, Japan
Voices, Gallery Koyanagi, Tokyo
Christian Marclay Translating, Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo
The Clock, LUMA Foundation, Arles; Plaza Foundation and Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Geneva
Christian Marclay, Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco
2020To Be Continued, Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Geneva
Look, Pavement Gallery, Manchester
2019The Clock, Australian Centre for the Moving Image, Melbourne
Christian Marclay, White Cube, London
Compositions, Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona, Spain
The Clock, The Polygon Gallery, North Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Sound Stories, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, California
Christian Marclay, Paula Cooper Gallery, New York
Chewing Gum, Midnight Moment, Times Square, New York
2018The Clock, Tate Modern, London / Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Israel
Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival
Sound Stories (in collaboration with Snap), La Malmaison, Cannes, France
2017The Clock, Instituto Moreira Salles, São Paulo; Copenhagen Contemporary
Screams, White Cube, Hong Kong
Phones, Paula Cooper Gallery, New York
Sapporo International Art Festival 2017 NEW LIFE: Exhibition without Replay, Sapporo Art Museum, Hokkaido, Japan
2016The Clock, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Contemporary Arts Center, New Orleans
Graphic Scores, Kunstraum Innsbruck, Austria
Six New Animations, Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco; White Cube, London
Rencontres de la photographie d’Arles, La Grande Halle, France
Telephones and Sound Holes, Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg, Florida
2015Shake Rattle and Roll, Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart
Action, Aargauer Kunsthaus, Aarau, Switzerland
Surround Sounds, Paula Cooper Gallery, New York
Guitar Drag, Artpace, San Antonio, Texas
The Clock, Art Gallery of Alberta, Edmonton; Museum Berarado, Lisbon; Los Angeles County Museum of Art
Christian Marclay, White Cube, London
2014The Clock, Musée d’Art Contemporain de Montreal; Guggenheim Bilbao, Spain; SALT Beyoğlu, Istanbul; Centre Pompidou-Metz, France; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis
2013Christian Marclay, Paula Cooper Gallery, New York
Things I’ve Heard, Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco
The Clock, Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, Ohio; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Winnipeg Art Gallery, Manitoba
2012Seven Windows, Palais de Tokyo, Paris
The Clock, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Sydney; Lincoln Center, New York; Kunsthaus Zurich, Switzerland; Power Plant, Toronto; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Nuit Blanche, Paris
2011Scrolls, Gallery Koyanagi, Tokyo
Ephemera, Michèle Didier Gallery, Paris
Cyanotypes, Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco
The Clock, LEEUM Samsung Museum of Art, Seoul; Paula Cooper Gallery, New York; Garage Center for Contemporary Culture, Moscow; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles; The Israel Museum, Jerusalem; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
2010What You See is What You Hear, LEEUM Samsung Museum of Art, Seoul
Looking for Love, The Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane
The Clock, White Cube, London
Festival, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
Fourth of July, Paula Cooper Gallery, New York
20092822 Records (PS1), MoMA PS1, New York
Video Quartet, Nasher Museum of Art, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina
2008Christian Marclay: Replay, DHC Art Foundation, Montreal
Cyanotypes, Paula Cooper Gallery, New York
Christian Marclay: Honk if You Love Silence, Musée d’Art Moderne et Contemporain, Geneva, Switzerland
Solo, Parkhaus im Malkastenpark, Düsseldorf
SNAP! Galerie Art & Essai, Université de Rennes, France
Stereo, Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco
2007Christian Marclay, The Sounds of Christmas, Musée d’Art Moderne et Contemporain, Geneva, Switzerland
Replay, Cité de la Musique, Paris, France; DA2, Salamanca, Spain; Australian Centre for the Moving Image, Melbourne
Crossfire, White Cube, London
Video Quartet, Western Bridge, Seattle
2006The Electric Chair, Paula Cooper Gallery, New York
The Bell and the Glass, Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden
Mixed Reviews (American Sign Language), MIT List Visual Art Center, Cambridge, Massachusetts
2005Galerie Yvon Lambert, Paris
Barbican Art Gallery, London
Shake, Rattle and Roll (Fluxmix), Paula Cooper Gallery, New York
2004Shake, Rattle and Roll: Christian Marclay, Franklin Art Works in collaboration with the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN; Seattle Art Museum; Kunstmuseum Thun, Switzerland; Collection Lambert, Avignon, France
The Sounds of Christmas, Tate Modern, London
2003Telephones, Sprengel Museum, Hannover
Christian Marclay, UCLA Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA; The Center for Curatorial Studies Museum, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY; The Seattle Art Museum, WA; Kunstmuseum Thun, Switzerland; Collection Lambert, Avignon, Avignon; Barbican Art Gallery, London
The Bell and the Glass, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA
Video Quartet, White Cube, London and Kunsthalle Fridericianum, Kassel
2002Video Quartet, Paula Cooper Gallery, New York
The Sounds of Christmas, Museum of Contemporary Art, Miami
Three Compositions, Contemporary Arts Center, New Orleans
Look at the Music/SeeSound: Christian Marclay, Ystad Art Museum, Sweden
Sampling, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA
2001The Sounds of Christmas, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco
Telephones, Delaware Center for Contemporary Art, Wilmington; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, Illinois
Currents 84: Christian Marclay, Saint Louis Art Museum, St. Louis, Missouri
Guitar Drag, Gallery Koyanagi, Tokyo
New Works, Paula Cooper Gallery, New York
2000The Sounds of Christmas, Media Z Lounge, The New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York
Cinema, Oakville Galleries, Oakville, Ontario, Canada
Telephones, Presentation House Gallery, North Vancouver
Video & Fotografi, Museet for Samtidskunst, Roskilde, Denmark
1999Telephones, Paula Cooper Gallery, New York
The Sounds of Christmas, ArtPace, A Foundation for Contemporary Art, San Antonio
1997Pictures at an Exhibition, Whitney Museum of American Art at Phillip Morris, New York
Arranged and Conducted, Kunsthaus Zurich, Switzerland
1995Accompagnement Musical, Musée d’Art et d’Histoire, Geneva
Amplification, Venice Biennial, Chiesa San Staë, Venice
1994Fawbush Gallery, New York
Christian Marclay, Fawbush daadgalerie, Berlin and Fri-Art Centre d’art contemporain Kunsthalle, Fribourg
1993Margo Leavin Gallery, Los Angeles
1992The Wind Section, Galerie Jennifer Flay, Paris
Christian Marclay: Sewn Record Jackets, Nancy Drysdale Gallery, Washington, DC
Masks, Galleria Valentina Moncada, Rome
1991Tom Cugliani Gallery, New York
Abstract Music, Jack Hanley Gallery, San Francisco
Maureen Paley Interim Art, London
Galerie Isabella Kacprzak, Cologne
1990The White Album, Solo Press Gallery, New York
Directions: Christian Marclay, Hirshhorn Museum & Sculpture Garden, Washington
Tom Cugliani Gallery, New York
1989Footsteps, Shedhalle, Zurich
Tom Cugliani Gallery, New York
Christian Marclay: Pochettes de Disques, Galerie Rivolta, Lausanne, Switzerland
1988One Thousand Records, Gelbe Musik, Berlin
Tom Cugliani Gallery, New York
1987850 Records, The Clocktower, P.S.1 Museum, New York, NY
1981Apartment, Geneva, Switzerland
