Marlene Dumas: Myths & Mortals

Myths & Mortals documents a selection of new paintings – launched in spring 2018 at David Zwirner, New York – ranging from monumental nude figures to intimate-scale canvases that feature details of body parts and facial features. Several paintings nearly ten feet high focus on individual figures, including a number of male and female nudes and a seemingly solemn bride, whose expression is obscured behind a floor-length veil. Like the Greek gods and goddesses, the characters in these paintings are both larger than life and extremely human. The smaller paintings – which the artist refers to as “erotic landscapes” – feature a variety of fragmentary images: eyes, lips, nipples or lovers embracing in a kiss. All of these works reflect the artist’s unique sensitivity to the human form and his constantly evolving experimentation with color and texture.

Alongside these new paintings, Dumas presents an extensive series of thirty-two works on paper originally created for a Dutch translation of William Shakespeare’s narrative poem, Venus & Adonis (1593), by Hafid Bouazza (2016). Myths and Mortals is accompanied by new scholarship on the artist by Claire Messud and a text by Dumas herself.