Marcus “Delmar” Clarke is an installation artist and art director who is fixated on creating a sense of wonder through unexpected mediums such as rocks, plants, and landscaping materials integrated with new media like video and lighting elements. His faith drives his practice, revolving around the pursuit of life to the full in mind, body, and spirit. By combining familiar elements like stone, rock, and dirt, and altering their context through light and digital interfaces, something unfamiliar and ethereal comes to life.
Marcus is a mixed-race Latino, raised in Boerne, TX, and graduated from the Savannah College of Art and Design in 2019. He moved to Austin quickly thereafter and exhibited his first solo exhibition, “Zion’s Window”, in February of 2020 at Vesper Gallery. He has continued his partnership with Vesper in their 2021 show “Hard Times, Hard Times, Come Again No More”.
Additionally, he was an Artist-in-Resident at Casa Lü in Mexico City in Spring 2021, where his focus was on the unique geology and ecology of Mexico City and the impact it has on urbanization. He explored geology based installation there by using methods like rammed earth and sun-dried brick as mediums.
Clarke’s latest exhibition “Sans Land”, at Bee Cave’s Contra/Common Gallery presents liminal spaces that seek to create meaning in the tension between despondent and vibrant moments in one’s life. Sans Land, emanating from the artist’s experience in the landscapes of the American West, sits in the gap between belonging to a place and the longing for the unfamiliar to become a home, and invites the viewer to accept and embrace that tension as a nod to the tension of heaven and the afterlife.