| This L.A.-based artist investigates the constructions of love by creating installations that uphold a mirror to the void of pop culture and demand of the sphinx, "I want to know what love is… I want you to show me." Demaree's work clutters itself fighting to be girly, cute, droll, adorable and saccharine and refuses to be naïve or jaded. Her installations echo the manic webs girls spin in their bedrooms after school and at night. Rainbow sculptures tease with tiger heads and giant charm bracelets taunt deer antlers. Discarded found objects are given new life and anthropomorphized with glitter and googly eyes. Neon signs spout ridiculous utterances and a giant banner that hangs over head states, "Not If You Were the Last Dream to be Dreamt in the Whole History of Dreams…" There is an immediacy to the materials. They are found in craft stores or on the street at garage sales. The pieces urgently express love, loss and lyricism. "When 'I love you' is sung on the radio it is totally public, says Demaree, "But when we say it to each other it is dreadfully private. How do you illustrate romance without cliché pop cultural and social signifiers?" To experience Demaree's work is to be lost in a dark wood in which real and manufactured emotions have overgrown each other like competing vines. There is no trail of bread crumbs leading out to a lit world of emotional authenticity and empowerment, just the consolation of, "that pop song that reminds us of a loved one, or a movie that always makes you cry even though you've seen it before," says Demaree. "This show is littered with gushy sentimental tropes and the reminders of a pathetic romanticism that will linger with you like a cheap perfume." |
