Biography

Jason DeMarte is an emerging artist teaching as a tenure track faculty in photography at Eastern Michigan University. Jason held a tenure track position at Mississippi State University, taught as Assistant Professor of fine art at Zayed University in Dubai, and taught as a visiting Assistant Professor at the University of New Mexico before joining the EMU faculty. He received his B.F.A. in Photography from Colorado State University and a 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 Wessel Snyman Creative in Cape Town, South Africa. DeMarte is part of the Photographers Showcase at Photo-Eye Gallery in Santa Fe. His work has appeared in journals, textbooks and publications including Photography Now, Photo Review, the Wynwood Arts Magazine, A Short Course in Digital Photography, Fraction Magazine, the Black Warrior Review, and the Oxford American. Jason's Utopic work recently closed a solo exhibition at Rule Gallery in Denver, and Wessel Snyman Creative in Cape Town South Africa. His Utopic work was also featured in a group exhibition titled the Museum of Un-natural History at Clamp Art in NYC. Jason was awarded the Gary B. Fritz image maker award this year at the national Society of Photographic Education conference in Atlanta Georgia. 

 

ARTIST STATEMENT

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 commercially produced and processed 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. .