Christian Marclay

Christian Marclay (born 1955) is an American-Swiss artist and composer whose practice spans sculpture, photography, video, installation, and performance. Working primarily with recorded sound as material rather than subject, he has transformed vinyl records, cassette tapes, turntables, and found audio objects into sculptural and conceptual works that interrogate the relationship between music, image, and time. His landmark video work The Clock (2010) brought him widespread institutional recognition, but his influence on artists working across sound, installation, and expanded media extends across four decades. Publications documenting his career before The Clock have become increasingly sought after by collectors of contemporary art books.

  • Cover of Christian Marclay, Phaidon Contemporary Artists Series, Phaidon Press, London, 2005, showing a grid of twelve colour stills from film and television, each depicting a person speaking on a telephone handset, arranged in four rows of three against a black ground, with the title CHRISTIAN MARCLAY in large white sans-serif type at centre and the Phaidon logo at lower left. Interior spread from Christian Marclay, Phaidon Contemporary Artists Series, Phaidon Press, 2005, pages 132–133, showing the Artist's Writings section with the text of Extended Play, 1988, on the left page alongside a colour photograph of three small cube sculptures assembled from compressed and folded vinyl records, and on the right page a colour photograph of a large dark cube sculpture made from compressed vinyl records with visible record labels and edges protruding from its surface.

    Christian Marclay — Phaidon Contemporary Artists Series, 2005

    Christian Marclay — Phaidon Contemporary Artists Series, 2005