Born in California in 1955 and raised in Geneva, London-based Swiss-American artist Christian Marclay has made sound the central leitmotif of his 40-year career. In those early college days of scratching records and sampling sex films as rhythm tracks for his band, Marclay fused his interests in punk and hip-hop with the performance work of Joseph Beuys and Vito Acconci.

Buying cheap records in thrift stores and embracing their often distorted sounds, Marclay made new work by repurposing old material, something which has remained a constant theme in his practice ever since – you can totally see why Marclay’s work appealed to Hedi Slimane, who transformed the artist’s paintings and comic book collages into embroidered couture for his debut Celine collection.

Scratching records for example, something now widely synonymous with hip-hop, was nothing short of revolutionary at the time Marclay was experimenting with it, and his live DJ performances throughout the 80s helped pave the way for found sounds in mainstream music.

His 1985 work, Record Without a Cover, which was sold without protective packaging so that the damage from shipping, storing, and playing of the record became part of the music, embodied both Marclay’s attitude towards embracing accidental sound and giving music a physical form.

Though sound has always occupied the forefront of his imagination, more recently, Marclay has experimented with different media, including sculpture, collage, installation, photography and film. Often he uses a combination of these forms, as with two of his most famous works, Crossfire (2007) and The Clock (2010). Both use collaged film clips as their building blocks, in the former, to create a barrage of gunfire that ricochets off four separate screens, while in the latter, to create a 24-hour video installation that is synchronised with the local time zone.

Both works typify Marclay’s expert handling of old material. Through a process of deconstruction and reconfiguration, he creates new, multi-sensory experiences

Y-3 Swimming Trunks: £65

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