Into Open Air

P·P·O·W is pleased to present Into Open Air, an exhibition of new work by Kyle Dunn. Defying categorical restraint, Dunn combines sculptural and painterly traditions, including bas-relief and trompe l’oeil, to express the vibrancy of the masculine emotional landscape not often represented in popular visual culture. Drawing upon a range of influences such as Italian cinema as well as horror and science fiction novels, Dunn’s contorted figures ache with emotional and physical desire. In his first solo exhibition with the gallery, Dunn amplifies raw emotion within his theatrically staged and fantastically rendered reliefs.   

Capturing the simultaneous anxiety and nascent hope of our present moment, Dunn’s lush, luminous, and physiologically charged paintings describe the painful romance of overcoming loss before beginning anew. In works such as Boy on Table, Dunn depicts his classical figure in a moment of manic confinement, hovering in a virtual landscape and folded acrobatically around a modern marble table. Intertwining auto-biographical and fictional narratives, Dunn embraces the comedic absurdity of overwhelming emotions in this exhibition. Reflecting on his proclivity for melodrama, 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.” From the frenzied captivity of Headlights to the muddy repose of Dirt God, Into Open Air chronicles the chaotic journey through grief toward new emotional terrain. 

Kyle Dunn (b. 1990) lives and works in Queens, NY. He grew up in Michigan and received his BFA in Interdisciplinary Sculpture at Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA). He has had two solo exhibitions in New York at Sardine, 2017 and Thierry Goldberg Gallery, 2018 and has been included in group exhibitions at at Galerie Maria Bernheim, Zurich; Little Berlin, Philadelphia, PA; Nationale, Portland, OR; Part 2 Gallery; Oakland, CA; and Ground Floor Gallery, Brooklyn, NY.