| Rule: Jason DeMarte and Ronnie B. Johnson |
| Written by Ken Hamel | |||
Jason DeMarte: UtopicRonnie B. Johnson: Landscapes, Studies in Light and ShadowRule GalleryJuly 10 - September 5, 2009
Public reception: Friday, July 10, from 6-9pm  Photographer Jason DeMarte - photo by Ken Hamel/DenverArts.org  Photographer Ronnie B. Johnson - photo by Ken Hamel/DenverArts.org The work of Denver based photographers Ronnie Johnson and Jason DeMarte currently on display at Rule highlights one of the basic conundrums of the medium: is the photographer's job one of documentation, capturing a moment in time, perhaps sublime, perhaps not, or do they frame the world in such a way so as to create a story where there otherwise might not be one? In the rear of the gallery, Johnson floats squarely between the extremes, coaxing personality out of the vast western landscape using a large format camera and presenting pleasant images that placate, but don't excite. It's the work of DeMarte that challenges our assumptions about what it means to document the natural world. DeMarte trains his camera not on a literal landscape, rather he captures images of wildlife through the world of museum dioramas, those boring, hoaky teaching tools that every gradeschool kid is made to study on science field trips. At first glance, it's not clearly evident what is amiss in DeMarte's images which typically juxtapose nature with photoshopped elements including shapes, logos and various kitsch, like frozen TV dinners and twinkies. The scenes are real enough: a bighorn sheep on a mountain, a manatee under water, a bear walking by a stream, but a closer look reveals the lifeless taxidermy of the subjects, which begs an even closer look at the subtle shift from the posed 3D world to the painted 2D world, the point where the diorama transitions from sculpture to painted background. That's when the viewer realizes they are being lied to, manipulated, shown a scene out of context, and treated to the essence of the photographic medium. This is territory famously explored by Japanese photographer Hiroshi Sugimoto who noted "however fake the subject, once photographed, it's as good as real," but where Sugimoto creates conventional documents of the fake, DeMarte is one-upping the fake with colorful additions and bizarre pairings that turn Sugimoto's "as good as real" aphorisms on their head: twinkies float above the bear's mind's eye, the sheep looks out on a purple "moon." Of course today, in the age of digital manipulation, we no longer expect truth when confronting an image (not that truth was ever necessarily there to begin with), but DeMarte's photographs challenge us to reconsider what is true when faced with subtle lies (the diorama as natural world) and blatant lies (the photoshoped desires of his animal subjects.) - KLH Rule Gallery 227 Broadway Denver, CO 80203 303.777.9473 http://www.rulegallery.com
photos by Ken Hamel/DenverArts.org
Jason DeMarte - Jellied Preserve (2008) Ronnie B. Johnson - Omen (2008)
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