White Cube celebrates Christian Marclay’s visionary practice through landmark publications
Two seminal monographs chart the artist's extraordinary exploration of sound, image and abstraction, published to accompany his most significant exhibitions at the gallery across two decades.
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White Cube has long distinguished itself as a custodian of contemporary artistic vision, and its carefully curated publishing programme stands as testament to this commitment. The gallery now celebrates the remarkable oeuvre of Christian Marclay through two exceptional monographs that together form a compelling portrait of an artist whose practice remains among the most intellectually rigorous and aesthetically adventurous of our era.
Liquids, published to coincide with Marclay’s 2015 exhibition at White Cube Bermondsey, offers a visually arresting meditation on the artist’s multifaceted engagement with abstraction and popular culture. This award winning volume traces the intricate dialogue between image and sound that animates his practice, moving fluidly through the inheritance of Abstract Expressionism whilst simultaneously drawing from the vernacular language of Pop art. The book becomes, in essence, a paper manifestation of Marclay’s intellectual and aesthetic preoccupations, rendered with the precision and elegance one expects from such a significant artistic statement.
Crossfire, first published in 2007 to mark his exhibition at White Cube Hoxton Square, extends this exploration through an ingeniously conceived visual narrative. Rather than merely documenting the original presentation, the publication reimagines the exhibition itself as a textual and pictorial experience, bringing together works of staggering ambition: vast video installations sit beside intimate prints fashioned from the appropriated language of comic books, each rendered in Marclay’s distinctive formal vocabulary. A thoughtful essay by renowned curator and writer Tom Morton provides critical perspective, illuminating the conceptual frameworks that underpin this body of work.
The presentation of these volumes alongside Marclay’s current solo exhibition at White Cube Paris represents a rare opportunity to engage deeply with an artistic practice that has profoundly shaped contemporary art discourse. His methodology, which treats sound and image as equally weighted visual materials, continues to expand the possibilities of what art might be and do.
For a limited period, White Cube offers both publications together as a collected set, accompanied by a complimentary Screams poster featuring a series of striking black and white woodcuts previously exhibited at White Cube Hong Kong in 2017. This constellation of works provides an uncommonly rich entry point into the philosophy and production of one of contemporary art’s most essential voices.
Imagery courtesy of White Cube (@whitecube).
