Jonathan Marquis: Earth Eaters

108 Pages | $20

Available for purchase HERE.

At the terminal zone of humanity, we are all Earth Eaters.

"Marquis's work addresses both the peaks and valleys of art history as well as what it means to live life in the afterglow of peak oil, with so many growing valleys left dry by erosion and rapid climate change stretching out before us. Visualizing a new notion of "the catastrophic sublime" that makes it possible to imagine living in a world without us is one of the monumental task of our times, and Marquis's work does not shy away from the need to rethink such relations, whether they revolve around the dialectics of earth and self, consumption and subsumption, organism and cosmos. We are afterall, now living within the horizon of a global village this is just as much about being in dialogue with the fellow villagers as it is the globe we live on. This intergral perspective is slowly becoming the dominant paradigm by which we are all fed, nourished and kept alive on the small blue planet that we inhabit together somewhere in the backwaters of the Milky Way, as so many Earth Eaters."

A catalog featuring the artwork of Jonathan Marquis with a critical essay by Grant Vetter.

Website: Jonathan Marquis IG: @jonathanbmarquis The Earthy Blues | @theearthyblues

Jonathan Marquis has been working at the intersection of land art, site specificity and performative actions while still being engaged with more traditional mediums like drawing, painting and printmaking. As a multi-media artist and mountaineer, Marquis has redefined the notion of embedded art practice, often living in his working sites for months on end. By returning to some of the same glacial sites year after year, Marquis has been able to act as a first hand witness to the ecological devastation that is occuring across the continental US and beyond. Toward this end, Marquis has been using time-based mediums to document the fast recession of snow covered terrain and other effects associated with climate change. Marquis often includes actual detritus associated with run off in his printmaking projects, glacial ice in his performances and the aesthetics of a barren sublimity in his pictorial works. He has covered thousands of miles on foot in some of the most precarious environments in order to produce an art practice that combines consciousness raising with new models of pictorial story-telling about how fast the world is changing in the age of the Anthropocene. 

Marquis received his MFA in 2017 and MA in Art History in 2019 from the University of Arizona. His works have displayed across the United States, including the Center for Visual Arts in Denver, Colorado, The Museum of Contemporary Art Tucson, University of Arizona Museum of Art, Missoula Art Museum and Fine Arts Complex in Tempe, Arizona. In 2016, Marquis received a fellowship for interdisciplinary research from the University of Arizona and in 2017 the Jane W. Williams Art History Research Prize and a year-long honorarium at the University of Arizona Art + Environment Gallery. He currently splits his time working and teaching in Arizona and Montana.