Defying categorical restraint, Kyle 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. 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.”

Dunn 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 Galerie Maria Bernheim, Zurich; Little Berlin, Philadelphia, PA; Nationale, Portland, OR; Part 2 Gallery; Oakland, CA; and Ground Floor Gallery, Brooklyn, NY.  

Organized by the Department of Art and Art History. Co-sponsored by the UC Davis College of Letters and Science and the Manetti Shrem Museum.