Marc Dennis is an American artist known for his hyper-realistic and strikingly detailed paintings of staged images of transformative possibilities that satirize and subvert beauty, art history, and popular culture. Using satire and irony as his muse, and with a nod to artists such as Caravaggio, Manet, Magritte and Norman Rockwell, Dennis’ paintings are saturated with truths and clichés about human behavior and the psychological, spiritual and physical relationships we forge with art and popular culture. The thrust of Dennis’ efforts is directed toward the production of a kind of realism that is not literally as we know it, but rather achieves a special level of conviction on its own terms. Dennis’ paintings hover between staged spectacles and plausible situations; his work as a whole is saturated with truths and clichés about our emotional, psychological and spiritual relationships we have with nature and art. His paintings have been reviewed in the New York Times, Art News, Huffington Post, Jewish Week, Whitehot Magazine, Blackbook, The Forward, amongst many others. In addition his work was recently featured in Excellence Luxury Magazine Spring 2016 issue; The Laboratory Arts Collective February 2016 issue; and as the cover artist for Art Voices Spring 2015 issue; the centerfold for Whitehot Magazine, Art Basel Miami Beach special edition, December 2015; and he was featured in Modern Painters “25 Artists to Watch” Spring 2013 issue. His works have been included in numerous group and solo exhibitions in New York City, Aspen, London, UK, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, Chicago, Miami, Houston, Seattle and South Korea. His works are in numerous private and public collections, including those of John and Amy Phelan, Bill and Maria Bell, Beth DeWoody, David and Jennifer Stockman, Carl and Donna Hessel, Larry Gagosian, Larry and Marilyn Fields, Bob and Cortney Novogrtatz, Nancy Rogers, Michael and Jo Danoff, Sean and Tammy McCarthy, and The Neuberger Berman Collection, New York; The Blanton Museum of Art, University of Texas at Austin; The Springfield Museum of Art, Ohio, and the Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts at Stanford University, Palo Alto, California, The Flag Art Foundation in New York City, The Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles, The Memorial Art Gallery at the University of Rochester, NY and The Everhart Museum of Natural History, Science & Art, Scranton, PA. Born in 1971 in Danvers, Massachusetts, Dennis is second eldest of five sons. He received his B.F.A. from Tyler School of Art of Temple University in Philadelphia, PA and his M.F.A. from The University of Texas at Austin. Dennis has received grants from Intermedia Arts, the Andy Warhol Foundation, the Pollock Krasner Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. Marc and his wife and their two children live and work in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. |
Brooklyn-based artist Jenna Morello first gained international exposure after being first runner-up on Oxygen Network’s “StreetArt Throwdown” hosted by Justin Buas.
Jenna is versatile artist who is equally at home creating large-scale bold, expressive walls as well as intimate, meticulously crafted gallery pieces. She mixes and matches multiple mediums to create art that conveys the point of view of an introspective mind. Her work can be seen across the country in solo and group shows, outdoor mural installations and collabs with a host of cutting-edge artists. She has completed commissions for such diverse organizations and events as The Ritz Carlton, Universal Music Group and The Superbowl. You can see more of her work at JennaMorello.com Danielle Charette is a Contemporary Narrative Artist born in Pennsylvania, who resides and works in the beautiful Brooklyn neighborhood of Greenpoint, in New York City. Her art is a highly symbolic and metaphoric form of story telling meant to convey her life experiences and evoke emotion in the viewer using her own authentic visual language. With her modern folk art styling and iconic imagery, she paints haunting tales of love, life, death, the afterlife, dreams, heartache, heartbreak, loss, whimsy and punk rock, often with conceptual elements and humor. Repetitions of theme, geometric shapes, color and design create cohesion throughout her paintings with each piece telling a portion of a story until the story is complete. Several sub-cultures as well as her French heritage and the Pennsylvania Dutch heavily influence her art work. It is an evolution of her love of love, iconic shapes, folk art, outsider art, dias los muertos, religious iconography, poetry, playing cards, symmetry,stained glass, vintage deco and art nouveau design, fairy tales, old horror films, the sea, tattoos, gothic and punk rock music, clowns and cartoons. Danielle Charette’s original oil paintings and art have been exhibited both nationally and internationally at a long list of galleries and museums and continues to sell to contemporary art collectors worldwide. Danielle currently owns and operates Cave Art Gallery in Greenpoint, Brooklyn in New York City. Cave also houses her artist studio which is open for studio visits by appointment only. To see more of her work please visit www.daniellecharetteart.com |
Ken Solomon’s work promotes pauses; detailed photorealism in watercolor but also a deeply developed conceptual statement about our era. Solomon makes tongue-in-cheek paintings of Internet screen shots with both exacting detail and a shaky hand. Paintings of Google image searches and iPhone screens - icons and technology so close to us that we can’t see it. Solomon opens up a visual dialogue with what we consider the mundane and in this way opens a new way of producing a kind of pop art that is non-nostalgic and totally current. His subjects have since expanded to include images of Google Earth, YouTube, and screen shots from iPads made to scale. Some of Solomon’s works also take an autobiographical turn, as in his paintings of Facebook profiles of people who share his name, or his Pandora playlists. Solomon says that his paintings are “intended to promote pauses. Pixels to paint. In a digital world of hyper-speed the work slows down visual information, fossilizing the flux.”
In addition to painting, Solomon makes video work, most recently using the instagram 15 second limitation to share personal yet universal moments in unique ways. (instagram handle is kmskms135). Performance and outreach projects are another of Solomon’s pursuits. “I’m bit by the interactive bug” he said. “I love mystery. Sometimes I feel too familiar with what I know I can do. The unknown from total strangers introduces amazing revelations.” He’s asked strangers to partake in the exact same tasks and then reveals the unique variations that result, such as thousands of volunteers wearing the same wig, hundreds of people taking a video of the sky around the globe at the exact same time on the same day, having strangers draw him amongst other endeavors. Solomon has video work and paintings in the permanent collection of the MOMA in New York, has shown in in multiple shows at the FLAG Foundation in New York (Attention to Detail curated by Chuck Close, Size Does Matter curated by Shaquille O’Neal, Wall Rockets curated by Lisa Dennison), has work in the permanent collection of Jumex, has been written up in Whitehot Magazine, Modern Painters, was a Critic’s Pick in ArtNews, has been written up in the New York Times, ArtLog, Wall Street Journal. His website is KenSolomon.com Instagram is KMSKMS135 |