Frith Street Gallery is delighted to announce an exhibition of new works by Marlene Dumas.
The paintings in this show are created through a mixture of chance and intention, mostly evolving in a dance through time, combining very fast and focused actions with reflective pauses. Here, Dumas’s style as well as subjects move between being in and out of control. We encounter neither portraits nor observations, but images of feelings and moods. The tone is one of mourning, of the desperation of displacement, and of grief both personal and universal.
For the artist these sentiments find their expression in one of the great and ancient parables. In Book Six of Metamorphoses, Ovid recounts the story of the satyr Marsyas, who challenged the god Apollo to a musical competition. In the contest (which was judged by the Muses), the terms stated that the winner could treat the loser any way they wished. Apollo triumphed and he punished his challenger by skinning him alive. Dumas relates to the version that says Apollo won by the trick of playing his lyre upside down, while Marsyas’s flute could not be played that way. To her, Apollo represents unjust revenge, and Marsyas symbolises not excessive self-belief, but rather liberty and artistic freedom, speaking truth to power.
Even before she read about the story with its various interpretations, Dumas was inspired and moved by a photograph of a Roman statue in the Louvre depicting Marsyas stretched-out and tied to a stake, She admired the wildness of the satyr daring to challenge a god who maintains power by any means necessary, tracing parallels with our present political leaders, who rule not by joy and justice but by addiction to power. Ancient atrocities and massacres seem to duplicate themselves in the present.
Dumas’s large painting Mourning Marsyas (2024) has grown organically. Like several other works in the exhibition, it began with paint poured directly onto the skin-like canvas. From this elongated stain, a central figure has been teased out, with others painted beside and around it.
For more information, visit Frith Street Gallery
