Lyons Wier Gallery is pleased to announce American Tourists, Marc Dennis' first solo exhibition with Lyons Wier Gallery.
Visual representations of sexuality throughout history have played key roles in the culture of sex, ranging from open display to absolute censorship. Brooklyn based painter Marc Dennis presents a new body of work based on female flashers calling into question sexuality, pornography, fine art and fantasy. The artist leads us in an imaginative reconsideration of a traditional style of figurative painting, addressing the subversive potential of beauty and pleasure through a very modern lens, that of the cell phone camera. By addressing the cultural phenomenon known as "sexting," the means of exposing oneself via SMS (Short Message Service), Dennis' paintings are a response to the experience of contemporary notions of voyeurism.
His paintings exude an extraordinary physical and emotional intimacy, evoking a modicum of seduction, providing the imagination opportunity to invent an immediate aftermath regarding the imagery, filling in the blanks in order to create a narrative. This spontaneous collaboration between viewer and painting provides the focus for the exhibition.
The painting of women, all American tourists, exposing themselves in provocative poses in public places of cultural value, represents a search for authentic subjectivity by appealing to something hard-wired or innate in all humans.
Assuming that sex preoccupies the behavior of many, if not most, humans, one of Dennis' objectives with this new body of work, using a straightforward style of realistic painting, is to force us to confront the theme of desire and authenticity. We are not only viewers of the paintings; we are voyeurs of their subjects.
Marc Dennis received is MFA from the University of Texas at Austin in 1993 and his BFA from the Tyler School of Art, Philadelphia, in 1989.