Dennis is known for his hyper naturalistic, highly detailed and obsessively delineated paintings that evoke nostalgia for familiar historical styles and aesthetic notions of beauty. However, it is Dennis’ provocative content that makes his work so compelling. In order to distill something otherworldly from within nature’s beneficence, Dennis uses imagery that is disorienting, disquieting, and even freakish. There is always something stirring beneath the surface.
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. Although at first glance they appear to be faithful recreations of observed details, Dennis’ canvases present us with a hyper-real unreality. The artist’s deft use of Baroque, or Caravaggesque, lighting only increases the dramatic tension in his surreal contexts.
Family Tree features a bouquet in what seems to be an everyday interior adorned with family photos, bookshelves, files, and a checkbook. However, the tranquil abode and bouquet are besieged with super-sized insects feverishly courting, copulating, preying, and fleeing. This uneasy tension greatly contrasts with the harmonious and bountiful celebration of the wonder of nature in The Exuberant Garden.
Inspired by Dante’s Divine Comedy, Above in the Bright references the in-between state between darkness and light experienced in Purgatory. As they emerge from darkness, Dennis’ orchids are seductive yet dangerous and haunting.
In Exquisite Dragon, Dennis pays homage to Rembrandt’s iconic Flayed Ox (1655.) Hanging carcasses, reverently painted and magnificent in their physicality, become a thing of artistic beauty while offering something poetic and spiritually profound.
In Nature Morte, that which is dead comes to life. That which is living is at once potent and fragile. The tension between the playful and subversive in Dennis’ paintings result in works that are surprising, spellbinding, and always open to further interpretation.
Born in Danvers, Massachusetts, in 1964, Marc Dennis studied at The Art Institute of Boston and received his B.F.A. from the Tyler School of Art. He received 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, Miami, and Seattle. His works are found in numerous private and public collections, including The Neuberger Berman Collection, New York; The Blanton Museum of Art, University of Texas, Austin; The Memorial Art Gallery, University of Rochester, New York; The Springfield Museum of Art, Ohio, and the Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Center for visual Arts at Stanford University, Palo Alto, California.