MARC DENNIS New Paintings
February 14 – March 15, 2008
Hirschl & Adler Modern is proud to open Marc Dennis: New Paintings on Thursday, February 14, 2008.
The artist’s first solo exhibition at Hirschl & Adler Modern will feature more than sixteen new works in oil. Whether working on a small or giant scale,
Dennis uses his paintbrush as a microscope, revealing– with a perverse preference for odd and surprising details– hidden and subtly altered terrains within the natural world of flowers, fauna, tiny animals, and insects.
Although at first glance they appear to be faithful recreations of the observed world, Dennis’ canvases present us with a hyperreal unreality. In True to Life, super-sized pinned wasps rest tagged and isolated in sterile trays, offering us a visually playful–albeit morbid–vanitas.
The otherworldly blooms in Florigium Quintus Sporealis blare like megaphones while simultaneously offering us seductive pathways to their pollen centers. In Sapphire Bling Bling, large imitation daisies open to offer iridescent sapphires -veritable “eye candy” for those willing to be seduced by the voluptuous surfaces, sensuous lines, and visual pleasures of oil paint in Dennis’ work.
Dennis’ unique brand of realism infused with artifice can be odd, disorienting, disquieting, and even haunting, as he explores what he calls the “subversive potential of beauty and pleasure.” The “freakish beauty” in Dennis’ paintings often continues below the surface. The artist’s deft use of Baroque, or Caravaggesque, lighting only increases the dramatic tension in his surreal contexts. He encourages us to look closely at the details, and once drawn in, enables us to absorb additional layers of meaning.
By occasionally incorporating mythological and biblical references and symbols in his work, Dennis explores not only the act of painting, but also relevant societal concerns. His paintings may evoke nostalgia for familiar historical styles and aesthetic notions of beauty, but his subjects – often fragmented and floating in a sea of representations, are, for Dennis, “very much of the moment serving as metaphors for the times we live in.”
Born in Danvers, Massachusetts, in 1964, Marc Dennis received his B.F.A. from Tyler School of Art, and his M.F.A. in 1993 from The University of Texas, Austin. He has participated in numerous group and solo exhibitions in New York,Washington,D.C., Los Angeles, Chicago, and Seattle. Most recently, his Portrait in the Composition of a Jackson Pollock Painting, Echo No.25, (oil on canvas, 72 x 72 in.) was featured in the Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition Exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution of American Art, Washington,D.C. July 2006–February 2007).
