Christian Marclay: Action

This catalogue was published on the accasion of the exhibition “Christian Marclay: Action”, Aargauer Kunsthaus, Aarau, August 30 — November 15, 2015. When his 24-hour film The Clock was awarded the Golden Lion at the 54th Venice Biennale in 2011, Christian Marclay’s hour had struck. Yet as an artist, performer and pioneer of turntablism, the Swiss-American Christian Marclay (born 1955) had already been famous for his complex oeuvre for more than 30 years, translating sounds and music into visual forms in his performances, installations, collages, sculptures and photographs, creating new sensory experiences that his viewers had never before experienced. Comic books and mangas are the source material for Marclay’s most recent works: the immersive video animation “Surround Sounds” (2014–2015) and the series of Onomatopoeia paintings and works on paper inspired by the wet, liquid sounds of painting. Christian Marclay: Action, an extensive monographic survey, covers the entire spectrum of the artist’s multimedia and synaesthetic oeuvre, from previously little-known early works to his most recent paintings and video.