Through the Dutch Golden Age, vanitas grew in reputation as a style of memento mori that emphasised life’s transience. The opulent work have been steeped in symbolism and foregrounded the futility of ambition and worldly pleasures.
Marc Dennis attracts on this Seventeenth-century custom as he refashions the nonetheless life for a recent viewers. In a current oil portray, “Happily Ever After,” hordes of honeybees and hornets descend on a lush bouquet. Kaleidoscopic bubbles float throughout the five-foot canvas, reflecting the encircling colours and distorting clear viewers of close by flowers and fruit.
The bugs and shiny orbs add one other layer of impermanence to the already fleeting imagery, whereas additionally reflecting on the tenuous relationship between the natural and human-made. Related tensions seem in “Allegory of the Readymade,” which suffocates and warps a seemingly vibrant portray with thick layers of plastic wrap. Every of the works clings to a short second in time, capturing each life at its prime and serving as a daring reminder of its inevitable finish.
Dennis’ work are on view in I’m Pleased You’re Right here by means of March 1 at Harper’s Gallery in New York. Discover extra from the artist on Instagram.
