Brian Michael Dunn American, b. 1982

Brian Michael Dunn creates vibrant, exuberant paintings and sculptures that question the very act of looking. In his practice, Dunn engages in image mediation and multiplication, referencing historical modes of spectatorship and their evolution through the age of visual reproduction. Utilizing a variety of pictorial traditions, he contorts the materiality of visual elements by re-orienting them in a new landscape of expression. His convoluted overlappings invoke a disorienting effect on the viewer, lingering in the gaps between abstractionism and naturalism. Presenting as both images and objects, his works showcase the fragility of signifiers and their potential dissolution of meaning. Dunn’s large-scale works culminate as an critical reflection on the language of mass reproduction and its resulting dissonances.

Brian Michael Dunn (b. 1982, Milkwaukee, WI) began his academic career by receiving his BFA in Painting at Boston University. After enrolling at Cornell University, he obtained his MFA in 2013. Dunn has exhibited throughout the United States, previously serving as the subject of a solo exhibition, The Other Side, at Hamiltonian Gallery. He has additionally been showcased at the Kreeger Museum in Washington, D.C., Mono Practice and the Reinstitute in Baltimore, MD, and Tiger Strikes Asteroid in Brooklyn, NY.

His works are in the permanent collections of numerous private and public institutions, including Google Headquarters in Arlington, VA and Costa Palmas Casitas in Cabo, MX. In addition, Dunn is the recipient of several awards and grants, including a D.C. Art Bank Grant (2020), a Maryland State Individual Artist Grant (2019), and a Hamiltonian Artists Fellowship Grant (2018). He currently lives and works in Takoma Park, MD.