“In the largest painting, Rites of Spring (2012), DeMuro’s title references both Igor Stravinsky’s groundbreaking ballet and orchestral concert work as well as an American post-hardcore band, which broke up after a short time after gaining a reputation in the mid-1980s. Although the band members hated the term, they are credited with anticipating a form of music known as “emo” or “emotional hardcore,” in which the fast, furious beat of punk music is combined with confessional lyrics.
“Done largely in different tonalities of copper and Veronese green, the painting contains a large squarish frame within its physical square. The broken outline of a classical column bisects the painting, stretching from outside the frame’s lower band nearly to the top of its interior. A row of silhouetted tulips runs along the bottom edge of the painting’s lower left quadrant, from the corner to just below the column. Superimposed over the frame as well as the area above and below it, an oddly colored, largely greenish, solid-looking rainbow floats as if crowning the capital of the column.”
–by John Yau, from the catalog essay
