Confected

Richard Levy Gallery is pleased to present Confected, a two-person exhibition of photographs by Jason DeMarte and paintings by Matthew McConville. These artists playfully twist their representations of realism to explore their exquisite and idiosyncratic versions of the natural world.

Michigan-based photographer Jason DeMarte creates fictional tableaux that examine beauty, perfection, and excess in relation to flora and fauna. In his Confected series, DeMarte digitally composes images that blend scenes of birds, trees, fruit, and flowers with brightly colored, commercially processed items. Compositions include pigeons dripping with baby blue paint, cowbirds surrounded by a confetti of rainbow sprinkles, and peonies covered in corn syrup. These photographs show a highly stylized world that combines the contrived and the natural.

DeMarte’s work can be found in the collections of the Fort Collins Colorado Historical Museum; the Fort Wayne Museum of Contemporary Art in Indiana; Los Angeles Center for Digital Art; and the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago, IL. He has shown in exhibitions throughout the US as well as in South Africa, Canada, and the United Arab Emirates.

Matthew McConville finds inspiration in art history. His recent work alludes to 16th-century Dutch still life paintings of flowers. These masterful and highly detailed oil paintings look as if they have burst out of context and taken on a life suspended in midair.

McConville’s work has been exhibited throughout the US and is in the collections of the Charlotte Bloomberg Children’s Center and the Sheikh Zayed Tower, Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore, MD; the Federal Reserve, Minneapolis, MN; Iowa State Bank, Iowa City, IA; United States Park Service, Isle Royale National Park, Houghton, MI; and the Weisman Museum of Art, Minneapolis, MN. He is an assistant professor at Goucher College in Baltimore, where he teaches drawing and painting.