Imbuing his paintings with liquid eroticism and cinematic drama, Kyle Dunn intertwines autobiographical and fictional narratives to express masculine emotional landscapes not often represented in visual culture. Capturing the simultaneous anxiety and nascent hope of our present moment, Dunn’s lush, luminous, and physiologically charged paintings render contorted figures in spatially deceptive environments to reveal the chronic cognitive dissonance between desired freedom and recognized obligation. Reflecting on his practice, Dunn notes, “There is a kind of humor and silliness to big emotions, at least when you are looking back and processing. Making paintings is a way for me to distill messy situations in my life down to something understandable.” Dunn lives and works in Queens, NY and received a BFA in Interdisciplinary Sculpture from the Maryland Institute College of Art. His work is in the collections of the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami and the Sunpride Foundation, Hong Kong.
[excerpted from PPOW Gallery’s website: www.ppowgallery.com]