Calvin Marcus
Skin Paintings

Calvin Marcus’s solo exhibition Skin Paintings presents oil paintings on linen that depict magnified renderings of the artist’s flesh alongside bronze and ceramic vessels. Inspired by oil painting techniques used by the Flemish Old Masters and the artifacts of early human civilizations, Skin Paintings extends Marcus’s investigation of media, process, and the abject in the familiar. This is the artist’s first solo presentation at a European institution.

Calvin Marcus (b. 1988, San Francisco) works serially, creating stylistically distinct bodies of work that probe unsettling subjects, both psychic and social, across a variety of media. For each new suite, Marcus develops unique material processes—discussing his slippery subject matter and free approach to craft, the artist explains: “I feel no loyalty to one particular medium, I let the idea dictate the form and go from there.” Marcus lives in Los Angeles.

The artist has been the subject of solo and two-person exhibitions at Karma, New York (2024); House of Gaga, Guadalajara, Mexico (2024, with Laura Owens); Clearing (Los Angeles, 2021; Brussels, 2020; New York, 2018, 2016, 2015); David Kordansky, Los Angeles (2019, 2016); K11 Musea, Hong Kong (2019); The Power Station, Dallas (2017); Peep-Hole, Milan (2015); and Public Fiction, Los Angeles (2014). In 2019, his work was included in the Whitney Biennial. Recent institutional group exhibitions include those at the Deichtorhallen Hamburg (2023); Start Museum, Shanghai (2022); Bundeskunsthalle, Bonn, Germany (2022); Louisiana Museum of Art, Humlebæk, Denmark (2021–2022); and Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (2020), among others. Marcus’s work is in the permanent collections of the Astrup Fearnley Museet, Oslo, Norway; Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris; K11 Art Foundation; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.