MORE ABOUT ARTIST

BRIAN DUNN

Through stenciled pattern paintings and shaped metal sculptures, Brian Michael Dunn (b. 1982 Milwaukee, WI) considers the mechanical, industrial and digital processes that mediate the contemporary landscape. Recent exhibitions include Kreeger Museum, Washington DC, Baker Gallery West Chester University, PFA gallery, DC, Mono Practice, Baltimore and Tiger Strikes Asteroid, New York. Recent grants include a DC Art Bank Grant, 2022, and a Maryland State Arts Council Individual Artist Grant, 2019. Dunn attended the Yale Norfolk summer painting program, the BFA at Boston University and the MFA at Cornell University. 

Through a melding of landscape, hard edged geometric abstraction and all-over pattern painting, my work considers the mechanical, industrial and digital processes that shape contemporary life. My practice typically involves brushing paint through hand cut stencils that I have amassed over years. The stencil shapes draw from many aspects of daily life: from studio objects to toys to graphics and quotations from art history. The stencil serves as a mediator between my hand and the painting and allows forms to be quickly and exactly repeated.  This lexicon of shapes rhymes in new iterations within and between individual works. In an inversion of signification, I apply generalized symbolic forms to convey a singular, decidedly humanist experience. Each piece is an effort to make an image of nature using the stuff of culture, highlighting the porousness of such a binary construction. In this body of work, I ask: How has the ubiquity of mass production affected our lived experience of the world?