Marc Dennis

Biography

Born in 1972 in Danvers, Massachusetts, Marc Dennis is an American Hyperrealist artist whose artworks celebrate the intricacies of historical paintings with a contemporary twist. He achieves this by merging various movements throughout the western art historical canon with modern tropes in order to create fresh paintings rich with irony, hype and narrative where elements of art history intersect with pop culture.

Hyperrealism is a development of photorealism. Photorealism rejected the painterly qualities, by which individual artists could be recognised, and instead strove to create pictures that looked photographic. Visual complexity, heightened clarity and a desire to be emotionally neutral led to the movement being likened to pop art. The early 1990s saw a renewed interest in photorealism, thanks to new technology in the form of cameras and digital equipment which offered even more precision.

Hyperrealism is based on the aesthetic ideologies of photorealism and was promoted by a handful of artists in the USA and Europe. It became popular in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s. This is due to painters such as Chuck Close, Audrey Flack, Richard Estes, and Denis Peterson that created a painting based on photographs to achieve a hyper-realistic look that could easily be mistaken for a photograph. Gottfried Helnwein is a contemporary representative from Austria.

Dennis 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. Recent exhibitions include Art Basel Miami Beach (2021), The Armory Show New York (2021) and Berkshire Botanical Garden, West Stockbridge, MA (2021).