Maarten Demmink

Maarten Demmink was born in the Netherlands, honed his craft at art schools in the Netherlands and currently lives in the Netherlands. But the multimedia artist's work is anything but provincial. The artist, who goes by the name Demiak, makes work that references regions as diverse as New Orleans; Punjab, Pakistan; Lisbon, Portugal; and Breezy Point, New York. These pieces depict destroyed houses and flooded streets. They have the look of aged photographs, complete with burned edges, white splotches and yellow coloring. But the trick's on you — they are neither photographs nor old; they have all been painted by Demiak within the past year or so. They depict the aftermath of hurricanes, floods and other natural disasters around the world. Each piece is named after a location and a year, leaving you to guess which historic "big blow" the piece is depicting. The paintings are small like archival prints usually are, too. Nothing here is overblown or overwhelms you. Like the wooden houses, everything is on an intimate, knowable scale. There's never the same perspective, either. The works range from street-level close-ups to aerial views, further adding to this archival feel, as if a different person had made each document. Why go through such pains to replicate images of disaster when so many already exist? It seems as if Demiak, by giving all of his works this aged quality, is trying to make us pause and contemplate the image and give the type of reverence these archival prints usually receive as historical relics. There is no shortage of images from disasters like Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Sandy, one after the other depicting destruction and human suffering on an epic scale. But such an overload can be desensitizing. By depicting them differently than you could ever expect to experience them, Demiak makes you take time to really look at them and see them differently, too.