Calvin Marcus

Calvin Marcus (b. 1988, San Francisco, California) is an American artist who lives and works in Los Angeles. Working across painting, drawing, printmaking, watercolor, ceramics, and installation, Marcus develops distinct bodies of work that engage with psychological and social tensions through shifting approaches to material, image, and form. Moving between humor, absurdity, and the uncanny, his practice draws attention to unexpected elements of familiar objects and situations, unsettling the boundaries between the ordinary and the bizarre.

The visual language in Marcus's work often plays between the absurd and meticulous. His early exposure to graphic design, through his father, informed his understanding of visual systems and the ways images communicate. Precision, color, and composition are foundational to his practice; seriality and repetition is continually disrupted by unexpected imagery and shifts in scale. Rather than remaining within a single medium or recognizable signature, Marcus allows each series to develop its own formal vocabulary.

Marcus's work ranges from oil paintings on linen of translucent, almost marble looking close ups of skin and veins to watercolor and vinyl airplanes painted on pristine cobalt blues and ivory greens. The scope of visuals in Marcus' work range heavily–he has created works with images of disembodied heads as well as screen-printed linen button down shirts with images of martini glasses on coat hangers.

Familiar objects, sparse still lifes, isolated figures, and expansive landscapes recur throughout Marcus’s work. The imagery of Marcus’s playful or seemingly unremarkable subjects can be humorous, strange, or quietly unsettling. Humor is both an invitation and a source of discomfort, leaving the meaning of an image complex and open-ended. Across mediums, Marcus uses shifts in material, surface, and presentation to challenge expectations and resist fixed categories.

Marcus’ work is held in major collections including the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York, USA; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, USA; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, USA; the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, USA; the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, USA; the Astrup Fearnley Museet, Oslo, Norway; the Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris, France; and the K11 Art Foundation, Hong Kong; among others.

Marcus has presented solo exhibitions at Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens, Deurle, Belgium; The Power Station, Dallas, USA; and Peep-Hole, Milan, Italy. His work has been included at institutions including K11 Musea, Hong Kong; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, USA; Deichtorhallen Hamburg, Germany; Louisiana Museum of Art, Humlebæk, Denmark; Bundeskunsthalle, Bonn, Germany; and the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, USA; among others.