Christian Marclay b. 1955

Artist Biography

Christian Marclay (b. 1955, San Rafael, United States, based in London, United Kingdom) examines the complex relationships between image and sound, as well as how merging these systems of information can produce new sensibilities, structures and connections in a media-saturated world. He employs the framework of sampling, a technique commonly used in music, on both visual and aural found materials. Fragments from LP records and cassette tapes, to comics and movies, are combined in unexpected ways. Since the 1970s, his approach to sound from the perspective of a visual artist has led to his recognition as a pioneering figure in the avant-garde music scene.

Marclay’s early experimentations with sound and art began with novel turntable performances, leading to projects like Recycled Records (1980–86) where thrifted vinyl records were cut and reassembled to produce fragmented rhythms and tones. Since then, his practice has expanded to include video, collage, photography and installation. The Clock (2010), for which he received the Golden Lion award at the 54th Venice Biennale, is a 24-hour montage composed from a century of film and television clips that depicts symbols of time. Synchronised to display each passing minute in the local time zone, the work is a functioning timepiece as well as a journey through cinematic history, collapsing the experience of real time with the illusory sense of fictional time.

The artist obtained his BFA from the Massachusetts College of Art, Boston in 1980. His work is in major collections including Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington DC; Kunsthaus Zürich; Kunstmuseum, Basel; Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art, Seoul; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo; Museum of Modern Art, New York; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Tate, London; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.

Notable solo exhibitions include The Clock (2025), National Gallery of Iceland, Reykjavik; The Clock (2025), Kunstmuseum Stuttgart; The Clock (2024), Museum of Modern Art, New York; Christian Marclay (2022), Centre Pompidou, Paris; Christian Marclay Translating (2021), Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo; To Be Continued (2020), Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Geneva; The Clock (2019), Australian Centre for the Moving Image, Melbourne; Compositions (2019), Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona, Spain; Sound Stories (2019), Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles; and The Clock (2018), Tate Modern, London. The artist has also participated in major international festivals including May You Live In Interesting Times (2019), 58th Venice Biennale; IllumiNATIONS (2011), 54th Venice Biennale; Tout le Temps (2000), 2nd La Biennale de Montréal; Man + Space (2000), 3rd Gwangju Biennale; dAPERTutto (1999), 48th Venice Biennale; Identity and Alterity (1995), 46th Venice Biennale.

Marclay had his residency at the STPI Workshop in 2025.