NOW REPRESENTING MARC DENNIS

Harper’s is pleased to announce the representation of New York-based artist, Marc Dennis. The artist is featured in the gallery’s 2024 NADA Miami presentation, on view through December 7. Dennis’s first solo exhibition with the gallery opens January 9, 2025 at Harper’s Chelsea 512.

Within his oil paintings, Dennis pushes the boundaries of hyperrealism as he contemporizes the canon of the old masters. The artist frequently directs his attention toward memento mori and vanitas works of the Dutch Golden Age with his studied gaze. He has intervened on these exquisite still lifes from the seventeenth century throughout his career, incorporating modern-age inventions and media like bubbles and cartoons onto meticulous renderings of flora with sumptuous hues. Such is the case in It’s Not Yesterday Anymore. Here, color enraptures viewers: bubblegum pink carnations burst open as they overlook neon orange creatures sitting atop a wooden table. Juxtaposed with the ornate flowers from life, these technicolor animated figures are striking reminders of the surreal that colors the everyday. 

In other bodies of work, Dennis incites dialogue with the history of art through portraiture. In a series titled Three Jews Walk into a Bar, for example, the artist depicts three Hasidic Jewish men in a museum studying Edouard Manet’s A Bar at the Folies-Bergere (1882). Here, Dennis fields a landscape of juxtapositions through the art historical canon: secular and ancient cultural traditions collide amidst his signature photorealist precision, foregrounding alternative historical imaginaries in the present day. It is this investigation of visual cultural memory that remains at the pith of Dennis’s work—the artist has a predilection for unraveling the spectacular within timeless scenes of beauty and loss.

Marc Dennis, It's Not Yesterday Anymore, 2024, oil on linen, 44.75 x 35 inches

Marc Dennis (b. 1974, Danvers, MA) received a BFA from Temple University, and an MFA from University of Texas, Austin. Most recently, his work has been the subject of presentations at K Contemporary, Denver (2023); A Hug From the Art World, New York (2023); Gavlak, Los Angeles and Palm Beach (2022 and 2021); and Berkshire Botanical Garden, West Stockbridge, MA (2021). Dennis has participated in recent group exhibitions at Harper’s, East Hampton and Los Angeles (2024 and 2023); Lehman College, Bronx (2024); Col Gallery, San Francisco (2024); Hunter Dunbar Projects, New York (2024); and Venus Over Manhattan, New York (2023). Dennis’s work has been acquired by numerous institutions, including Norton Museum of Art, Portland Museum of Art, Springfield Museum of Art, and Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art. Reviews of his work have appeared in Artnews, New York Magazine, and Time Magazine, among other publications. Dennis is based in New York City.

For sales inquiries, please contact sales@harpersgallery.com

For press inquiries, please contact info@harpersgallery.com

Website
Instagram