The images in Jason DeMarte’s series “Confected” are stuffed with flowers, birds and brightly colored candies, all carefully placed against incongruously grey skies. A selection are on view in a three-person show “After Industry,” which opens today at Wasserman Projects in Detroit and runs until April 7. (The series is also included in a show with photographer Matthew McConville at Richard Levy Gallery in Albuquerque, which opens February 4.) Digitally combining images of fabricated and artificial flowers and plants with highly processed sweets, DeMarte builds careful tableaux where garish color comes equally from cake sprinkles and poppy petals. As DeMarte writes about his work, “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.”
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