Overview

Pazo Fine Art is pleased to announce Second Spring, an exhibition featuring the works of Brian Michael Dunn and E.E. Ikeler. The exhibition will be on view in Washington D.C., at 1932 9th Street NW (enter from 9 ½ Street) from April 11th, 2025, through June 7th, 2025. An opening reception will take place on Friday, April 11th, from 6 to 8 PM.

 

Dunn and Ikeler both thematize the process of visual signification, their works focalizing a navigation of intricate, overlapping interfaces renderable only through the universal language of abstraction: data is embedded within each layer of their paintings, simultaneously obscured and assigned with meaning at the moment in which they are enveloped. Despite referencing objects present within the three-dimensional world, any sense of their internal natures are tainted once fixed in the syntactical structure of painting; meaning hence erupts through slippages of pattern, an excavatory proclamation of what is to be unearthed in the core of each work.

 

E.E. Ikeler’s featured paintings—spanning across a variety of their series—are unified through their conceptual reimaginings of a contemporary Romanticism, pertaining to conspiracy theories, astrological readings, and other forms of occult thinking. These transcendent, sublime ideals are materialized through the kitschy imagery that Ikeler adopts, serving as a framing device for the world building models they attempt to replicate. Dunn, in a similar vein, frames his work through the imposition of visual screens, adopted from the physical and digital borders that dictate and modulate the surrounding world. His paintings embody the affective potential of digital mediation, orienting the attention of spectators towards what underlies the hypermediated surface of the canvas. Dunn’s forms are drawn from the symbolic languages of construction, mechanical production, and graphic notation, and are subsequently redeployed in response to the natural world. In producing their works, Ikeler employs a symmetrical, additive process in coating a collage with a layer of resin, 3D printer filament, paint, and miscellaneous materials that is then constellated with pendants imprinted with pressed flowers. The two-dimensional space that Ikeler’s work occupies, distinguished through the systematic boundaries of a grid, parallels Dunn’s construction of a digital interface; the artists trace the potential for semantic convolution and reinscription within the boundaries of the art object.

 

The title Second Spring references the famous line constructed by French philosopher Albert Camus: “autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower.” As both artists reappropriate a variety of natural symbols into largely unnatural visual spaces, a distinct sense of  beauty emerges; the exhibition embraces the aesthetic appeal of the reinvocation of meaning under the structures of digitized culture.

 

An essay by Baltimore-based writer and educator Laurence Ross will accompany this exhibition.



 
Artist Bio
 

Brian Michael Dunn (b. 1982, Milwaukee, 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.


E.E. Ikeler (b. 1986, Phoenix, AZ) began their academic career by receiving their BFA from The Cooper Union in 2008, followed by an MFA from Yale School of Art in 2016. Ikeler has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions, featured at galleries such as Hemphill Fine Arts in Washington, D.C., Jeff Bailey Gallery in Hudson, NY, Mulherin in Toronto, Canada, and Kent Place in Summit, NJ. They have additionally been showcased at Essex Flowers in New York, NY, EFA Project Space in New York, NY, Abrons Art Center in New York, NY, and Yve Yang Gallery in Boston, MA. Ikeler is the recipient of several awards and grants, including a Leroy Neiman Foundation Summer Fellowship at Ox-bow School of Art (2016), a Yale FLAGS Award (2015), a Helen Watson Winternitz Award (2016), and a Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library Research Fellowship (2015). They currently live and work in Brooklyn, NY.



 
Laurence Ross is a Baltimore-based writer and educator. He received his MFA from the University of Alabama where he served as the Creative Nonfiction Editor for Black Warrior Review. His essays have been published in magazines and literary journals such as Pelican Bomb, The Georgia Review, Brevity, and The Huffington Post. In 2014, Ross served as the Director of P.3Writes, an educational program in conjunction with U.S. Art Triennial Prospect New Orleans. In 2020, he curated his first visual art exhibition at Woodland Pattern in Milwaukee, WI.


 

April 11 – June 7, 2025

 
Opening reception: Friday, April 11th, 6 - 8 PM
 
PFA - Washington D.C
1932 9th Street NW, #C102, (Enter from 9 1/2 Street), Washington, D.C 20001
 
Thursday - Saturday, 11 AM - 6 PM
Works