Pink Placebo

source: asondemarte

Jason DeMarte is an emerging artist teaching as a tenured faculty member in photography at Eastern Michigan University. He received his B.F.A. in Photography from Colorado State University and his M.F.A in Photography from the University of Oregon. DeMarte’s work has been exhibited in galleries and museums, both nationally and internationally. He is currently represented by Rule Gallery in Denver Colorado and is part of the Photographers Showcase at Photo-Eye Gallery in Santa Fe. His work has appeared in journals, textbooks and publications including; A Short Course in Digital Photography, The Elements of Photography, Six years later, Photo Review, the Wynwood Arts Magazine, British Journal of Photography, the Black Warrior Review, and the Oxford American. Some of Jason’s notable exhibitions include being the featured artist in the exhibition The Museum of Un-natural History at Clamp Art Gallery in NYC. Solo exhibitions at Rule Gallery in Denver Colorado, Wessell Synman Gallery in Cape Town South Africa, and the Detroit Center for Contemporary Photography in Detroit Michigan. Jason was also recently awarded the Garry B. Fritz image-maker award at the Society of Photographic Education conference in Atlanta Georgia.
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source: lenscratch

Jason DeMarte’s arresting images evoke a whimsical response, which smartly brings the viewer in for a closer look at what he’s really trying to tell us. Jason recently moved from a professorship in New Mexico to a teaching position at Mississippi State University, after receiving his B.F.A. in Photography from Colorado State University and a M.F.A in Photography from the University of Oregon. His work has been exhibited nationally and internationally and he was nominated for PDN’s 30 emerging photographers.

I’m including two of Jason’s projects, as I always find it interesting to see the evolution of a visual mind. Jason thinks outside the box to create thought-provoking images that push the boundaries of traditional photography. Much of the imagery that he uses for his project, Uptopic, are predetermined tableaus from museum dioramas, which add another layer of irony to this project about fabricated experiences.

My work investigates how our modern day interpretation of the natural world compares to the way we approach our immediate consumer environment. I am interested in the American modes of representing the natural world through events and objects that have been fabricated or taken out of context. This unnatural experience of the so-called “natural” world is reflected in the way we, as modern consumers, ingest products. What becomes clear is that the closer we come to mimicking the natural world, the further away we separate ourselves from it.

I work digitally, combining images of fabricated and artificial flora and fauna with graphic elements and commercially produced products such as processed food, domestic goods and pharmaceutical products. I look at how these seemingly unrelated and absurd groupings and composites begin to address attitudes and understandings of the contemporary experience. I represent the natural world through completely unnatural elements to speak metaphorically and symbolically of our mental separation from what is “real”, and compare and contrast this with the consumer world we surround ourselves with as a consequence.