Marcel Vidal makes paintings and sculptures. Quietly disarming and unsettling us with an ominous beauty, Vidal’s paintings are marked by their controlled brushwork, layering oil on linen with delicacy and precision. They are refined and restrained, incarnating brightly lit fragments of photographs or digital images: unidentified figures seem caught by flashbulbs, and hold their arms in defensive barriers; glossy foliage catches the light before retreating into darkness; distinguished hands are frozen mid-clap. Vidal’s minimal compositions are severely cropped to reveal only a sliver of their subject, using ambiguity to frustrate interpretation, all while inviting our curiosity.
Vidal’s sculptures, meanwhile, encompass contrasting and combative textures and materials: furs, feathers or deer hooves mixed with assembled wood, concrete or industrial metal hardware. Chains, spikes and pest-prevention devices are rigged up for attack or defence, echoing the hostility of urban space and inner-city infrastructure. The sculptures often house small, self-contained watercolour paintings that rub up against the authority of their environments: ribbons of sausages, fragments of sculptures, an irreverent asshole. In Vidal’s most recent work, sculptural assemblages have expanded outwards into more immersive environments, entering a dialogue with the history, architecture and symbolism of the spaces they inhabit. Gallery walls have been suffused with matte black spray paint, or floors softened with artificial grass, creating unexpected and surprising spatial shifts. Visually arresting, these sculptural environments create a playful tension between the organic and the constructed, the threatening and fetishistic, the vital and the macabre.
Marcel Vidal lives and works in Dublin.
Marcel Vidal
Balcony, 2017
expanding foam, spray paint, wood, watercolour on paper, framed with glass bitumen, zinc fittings, castor wheels, animal hooves, glue, twine, linen, plaster
196 x 62 x 62 cm / 77.2 x 24.4 x 24.4 in
Collection of Arts Council of Ireland
Marcel Vidal
Dead in the day, 2017
expanding foam, spray paint, wood, watercolour on paper framed with glass, bitumen, zinc fittings, castor wheels, rubber, animal fur, linen, plaster
241 x 120 x 80 cm / 94.9 x 47.2 x 31.5 in
Marcel Vidal
Everybody Knows, Marcel Vidal & Paul Hallahan, 2020
The Complex Dublin, Ireland
Marcel Vidal
The Hennessy Craig Award Exhibition, 2019
Royal Hibernian Academy, Dublin, Ireland
Marcel Vidal
SILVERFISH, 2018
The Dock Arts, Carrick on Shannon, Leitrim, Ireland
Photo: Paul McCarty
Marcel Vidal
Donut, 2017-18
Atrium Space, Temple Bar Gallery + Studios, Dublin, Ireland
Photo: Kasia Kaminska
Marcel Vidal
#untitled, 2013
Basic Space, Dublin, Ireland
Marcel Vidal, SILVERFISH, 2018, The Dock Arts Centre Leitrim, Ireland.
Commissioned by The Dock Arts Centre and Video production - pinklimevideos.ie supported by The Arts Council of Ireland - artscouncil.ie
Marcel Vidal is featured in MAKING ART: Sculpting, an exhibition exploring expanded notions of sculpture from four mid-career Dublin-based artists.
New work by Marcel Vidal is included in GENERATION2022: New Irish Painting.
Marcel Vidal's DEFENDER (2021) included in group exhibition 'Wayward Eye' at Temple Bar Gallery + Studios.
