Hours after watching Marcel Dzama’s Un Danse des Boufoons at the Zwirner Gallery in Chelsea, it still resonated with me. Sitting on a foam cube watching this peculiar (to say the least), 35-minute video projection made me question myself, what I knew, and even my surroundings. I personally did not like the video, and could not wait to get out once it was over.

Marcel Dzama is a Canadian-born artist, who has had his work represented by David Zwirner since 1998. His art is held in museum collections worldwide. As for the video itself, it is described as a “Dadaist love story”. It depicts a fictionalized account of the romantic affair between a man and woman. There are constant themes of good versus evil, death and rebirth, love gained and love lost, and very obvious tension.

It seems as though Dzama is well known and his work is held in high esteem. However, after walking through the curtains to exit the dark room, I found myself feeling oddly uncomfortable. I then realized: I did not like the video at all.

Throughout the video, there was music playing. At some points, the music was very high pitched and dissonant; I would have felt awkward listening to that without the peculiar images in front of me.

Very few characters were just regular people. Many wore masks, or even costumes, that made them seem foreign (but at the same time human and familiar). This familiarity in something so confusing and foreign is part of what rubbed me the wrong way. It was the line of characters wearing costumes that troubled me, as well. They applauded, and had mannerisms unlike many people do.

Just as I thought the video could not get weirder, in trots a human cow. It was majestic in its movement, but at the same time did not resemble a cow in the slightest besides its unconvincing plastic head. A particular character that stuck with me was the one wearing the flippable mask that went form happy to sad. This made me think about human emotions, and what they show about a person.

One of the only characters that did not have a mask, was a man with eyes painted on his face. He wore make-up and had an oddly shaped smile that reminded me somewhat of The Joker. Regardless, this character was equally as creepy as the rest.

As the movie concluded, the oddest thing of all occurred. This reborn man-cow opens its cloak to reveal an enormous vagina on its chest. Out comes one of the characters from earlier in the video. What disturbed me most about this, was that a full grown man was being born. Not only that, but this man was coming out of the birth canal fully clothed with facial hair.

Basically, everything was wrong about “Une Danse des Bouffons.” Nothing made complete sense, and there was no time during the video in which I felt content about what was happening. The short film kept me on my toes, and didn’t allow me to relax and guess what was coming next.

It was this combination of the atmosphere with the video in itself that made me feel very uneasy. The purpose of the video was to make me question traditional beliefs, and to make me feel as though there were things I did not know (or even that things I did know were just wrong); it definitely succeeded in doing just that.

For further reading, you can go to the press review here

All pictures were taken from a preview of the video here