Marc Dennis’s Sanctuary revisits the still-life tradition through a hyperrealist lens of decay and delight. A cluster of overripe fruits—bananas, pumpkins, citrus, and berries—rot and glisten against a black void, their surfaces mottled with mold yet alive with color. In this tableau of slow collapse, Dennis finds vitality rather than loss, transforming the vanitas genre into a meditation on impermanence and appetite.

The painting draws from the memento mori tradition of 17th-century Dutch still lifes, where beauty and decay coexist as reminders of mortality. Here, however, the humor and excess of Dalí’s Les Dîners de Gala hover nearby: the fruits feel sentient, performing one last feast before dissolving into the earth. Sanctuary becomes a portrait of transience and pleasure, a vivid reminder to live fully—even in the face of rot.