Christian Marclay at the Barbican Gallery

Seems I’m not the only one who can’t shake my romantic associations with the old LP format. Christian Marclay misuses vinyl gloriously: as a 20ft tower, as the ground for abstract painting, as the starting point for pre-digital image manipulation.

His bodymix series – figurative collages formed by stitching together album covers – yields up an astonishingly rich array of meanings. From the waste up we have (the pre-altered) Michael Jackson stitched to the belly of a black glamour model whose shin connects to a (very white) Roxy Music girl’s leg. Elsewhere, the androgynous Jim Morrison in baby doll knickers, plays with Cat Stevens’ yo-yo. I wonder what the peace loving Yusuf would make of all this.

Everywhere you get the sense that Marclay’s work is deeply relevant, becoming more so. The political connotations seem accidental and the better for that. There's no forced polemic.

Famously, in “guitar drag” he wires an electric guitar up to a sound system, ties it to the back of a pick-up truck and drives it through scrubland. Is this a fierce riposte to the Ku Klux Klan, a reflection on rock’n’roll, the Who and motorway driving or a piece of concrete music?

My eyes never sounded so good. I'll be back for more



Exhibition details