Impromptu Airs
Monique Meloche Gallery
2154 W. Division Ave, Chicago
November 6th - January 3rd
Public reception with the artist: Thursday, November 6, 6-8pm
Artist talk: Saturday, December 13, 4pm
Press Release
Through painterly abstraction and formal invention, Dan Gunn creates two and three-dimensional objects that are inspired by vernacular patterns, craft materials, and set design. Thick, laser-cut wood strips, overlaid with various pigment stains, form the foundation of many of his low-relief, wall sculptures. He draws his sources from materials in motion, from the buckling of a fabric curtain, the sleeves of a garment, or expanding screens. His gestures, at once seamless and non-conforming, gently manipulate the materiality of wood to occupy a space between restraint and release. Gunn’s diverse practice continues to develop in many directions, but here, for his second solo exhibition at moniquemeloche, the focus is on the expansion of two series in particular – his “fan” paintings and “draperies.” In both bodies of work, he plays with scale while exploring the full spectrum of color. Gunn squeezes and swells the silhouettes of his fans, abstracting from his previous renderings while upholding the visual identity of humble materials and exquisitely composed shapes. Gunn’s works are playful spectacles, each with their own malleable mannerisms or impromptu airs.
My Hands Are My Bite
Artists: Lilli Carré, Laura Davis, Carol Jackson, Diane Simpson
June 7 - August 2, 2014
Monique Meloche
moniquemeloche.com<
Opening reception June 12 @ 6-8pm
Discussion with the artists, Michelle Puetz and curator Dan Gunn
Saturday, 12 July @ 1:00pm
on the wall / Diane Simpson : Window Dressing
June 7 - August 2, 2014
My Hands Are My Bite is an exhibition of four Chicago-based artists—Lilli Carré, Laura Davis, Carol Jackson, and Diane Simpson—who employ a formal poly-temporality and purposeful engagement with vintage decorative modes. Their respective styles vary, from Art Deco flourishes of the Gilded Age, to the materials of the American frontier, and the International Style Modernism and the blended folk Americana. In the collision of the handmade and the found, the reality of before and after, the old and the new dissolve leaving a distilled and vulnerable form of style for consideration. The title of the exhibition comes from a work by Laura Davis that references Gabriel Orozco’s My Hands Are My Heart (1991).
In Davis’ work, the aesthetics of Mod become a theater of small scale objects and inscribed intricacies. The artist combines structures of store display and the corporeal bodies of fashion mannequins into tableaus of historical association. For Lilli Carré, the individual is always under construction. In books, animations, sequential drawings, and porcelain ceramic figures the person is always a fragile body; a little too pliable, in need of constant catharsis. Diane Simpson’s work is a meditation on structure that considers the meaning and history of decorative forms. For Simpson, Art Deco forms become models for androgynous new primary forms. An interest in early American industrialization and its mythic Western frontier informs Carol Jackson’s work. In Jackson’s recent sculpture, anachronistic forms drawn from Americana sheet music collide with webcam imagery taken from national park archives.
In My Hands Are My Bite, the charge for nostalgia reads as a modernist epithet for skepticism of progress. In their respective ways, Simpson, Jackson, Davis, and Carré work to revive overlooked aspects of human existence. Their coordinates are our coordinates, the consumer landscape of commerce, fashion, décor, architecture, and style. My Hands Are My Bite is on view through August 2, 2014, at moniquemeloche.
Monique Meloche2154 W. Division
Chicago, IL 60622
Untitled Fair
with Dennis Koch, for Marine Contemporary
December 4-8th
Booth D09
On the beach at Ocean Drive and 12th Street,
Miami Beach
Winter 2013
Sabina Ott: Ornament
Curated by Anne Harris
November 23 – January 11, 2014
Reception: Saturday, November 23, 5 – 8pm
With guest artists: Phyllis Bramson, Susanne Doremus, Matthew Girson, Michelle Grabner, Dan Gunn, Joe Jeffers, Anna Kunz, Michelle Wasson
Talk + Publication: A conversation between Sabina Ott and Michelle Grabner
Sunday, December 8, 3 – 6pm with talk at 4pm
More info at... www.riversideartscenter.com
September 2013
EXPO Chicago
With moniquemeloche
September 19th-22nd
Granted the "Artadia / EXPO Chicago Award"
Artadia is delighted to announce that Dan Gunn is the winner of the 2013 Artadia / EXPO Chicago Award.The award is generously funded by Artadia Founder and Board President Christopher E. Vroom. Juror Nora Burnett Abrams, Associate Curator of The Museum of Contemporary Art, Denver walked through the fair, to determine the award winner from a pool of 95 Chicago-based artists whose work was exhibited at EXPO.
For more info ...http://artadia.org/news/dan-gunn-wins-artadia-expo-chicago-award
Fall 2013
Terrain Exhibitions Biennial
with Karolina Gnatowski as Gunnatowski
September 15 - October 19, 2013
The sculpture on the corner of Highland and Jackson at 700 Highland in Oak Park.
More info at... http://terrainexhibitions.tumblr.com/
Summer 2013
Marine Salon No. 11
Santa Monica, CA
July 20 – Sept 14, 2013
www.marineartsalon.com
Salon No.11, Works 332 – 348
Life of Forms
Sarah Cain
Kendell Carter
Greg Colson
Dan Gunn
Lipschutz & Lipschutz
Stas Orlovski
In the Bedroom
Stas Orlovski's "Empire"
Click here for a downloadable PDF of Salon No. 11 press release
with moniquemeloche
January 2013
January 24–27, 2013
The Barker Hangar
3021 Airport Avenue
Santa Monica, CA 90405
Opening Night: Thursday, January 24, 7–9pm
Public Fair Hours
Friday, January 25, 11am–7pm
Saturday, January 26, 11am–7pm
Sunday, January 27, 11am–6pm
Summer 2012
Participant in the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture
Madison, Maine
Class of 2012
Columbia College A + D Gallery
Fall 2011
Color : Fully Engaged
Columbia College
A + D Gallery
September 25 - November 5
Opening reception Thursday, Sept 29th, 5-8pm
"Color makes a comeback every day. We open our eyes, we turn on the light, we see, we remember color. Color: Fully Engaged is a multi-faceted exploration of the meaning and interpretation of color. Via works created as part of fine arts, design and architecture disciplines, this exhibition follows modern and contemporary trajectories of color as both singular idea and associative methodology. Investigating color symbolism and hierarchies within historical, cultural and theoretical contexts, each selection ponders what may or may not be universal about color. The exhibition catalog includes an introduction by curator Jamilee Polson Lacy, essay by Claudine Isé, and artists' interviews."
Contributing artists include Academy Records, Jeanne Dunning, Susan Giles, Dan Gunn, Adriane Herman, Anna Kunz, Jessica Labatte, Matthew Metzger, Liz Nielsen and Nathaniel Robinson.
moniquemeloche
September 2011
Routine Scenic Machine
Monique Meloche Gallery
September 9 - October 8
Opening reception Friday, Sept 9, 6-9pm
For his first solo exhibition at moniquemeloche, Dan Gunn (American, born 1980, lives Chicago), who considers himself primarily a painter, will make all new work including wall-based, free-standing, and hanging constructions. Simultaneously present and elusive, Gunn’s work elicits an awareness of the viewer’s own visual and spatial perception through the construction of objects that highlight the interconnected relationship between artist, viewer, and object. “I am trying to construct an indifferent object that has recently become the object of desire, yet leave it in that mixed state,” says Gunn.
Using the many languages of abstraction, Gunn builds a series of malleable surfaces that display different functional, aesthetic and cultural relationships between their constituent parts. However, for Gunn, abstraction is not used to reveal some underlying truth but rather as a way to notice the everyday structures that influence our relationship with pictures. Among other things, Gunn’s work examines our curious relationship to commercial display and the found object. In the artist’s words, “everything changes once it’s found, becoming involved in a chain of associations and symbolic appropriations. A rags to riches story.”
Article by Lauren Viera of the Chicago Tribune
Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, UBS 12 x 12 New Artists: New Work
September 2011
UBS 12 × 12: New Artists/New Work: Dan Gunn
September 3- October 2, 2011
Gunn's abstract objects simultaneously inhabit the realms of painting and sculpture. In his three-dimensional compositions and installations, he explores perceptual phenomena using materials such as glitter, tinsel, chair caning, holographic paper, and patterned fabrics. His structures echo forms of display and domesticity while incorporating familiar found objects. For his UBS 12 x 12 presentation, Gunn explores the "depth" of painting by embedding a series of objects in a large horizontal surface.
12 x 12 Artist Talk: September 13th, 6 pm
moniquemeloche
January 2011
Winter Experiment 2011
January 18th to the 22nd, 2011.
Opening and conversation on the 22nd at 1pm.
Monique Meloche Gallery presents the Winter Experiment 2011. Four artists have been invited do one week long installations that end in a discussion open to the public. Please join me for my exhibition at that culminates in a Saturday afternoon "conversation" with Michelle Grabner. Chicago contemporary art podcast Bad At Sports will also be onsite covering the talks.
Saturday January 22, 1pm: Dan Gunn & Michelle GrabnerMichelle Grabner, who is an artist, curator, writer and the founder of The Suburban in Oak Park, teaches at the School of the Art Institute. After the conversation, follow us to Shane Campbell Gallery, for the open of Grabner’s solo exhibition Like a rare morel.
Other dates include...
Saturday January 15, 1pm: Ebony G. Patterson & Tumelo Mosaka
Saturday January 29, 1pm: Ben Fain & Shannon Stratton
Saturday February 5, 1pm: Anna Shteynshleyger & Andreas Waldburg-Wolfegg
Lloyd Dobler Gallery
September 2010
Multistable Picture FableLloyd Dobler Gallery
September 11th to October 16th, 2010.
Read reviews of the show.
"Four for Fall" by Claudine Ise, PBS's Art:21 Blog
"Chicago's Best of 2010" by Abraham Ritchie, Artslant.com
"Art review: Dan Gunn" by Candice Weber, TimeOut Chicago
"Winter of discontent", by Lauren Weinberg, TimeOut Chicago
"Best art of 2010 found in unlikely places", by Lauren Viera, Chicago Tribune
"Dan Gunn at Lloyd Dobler" by Lauren Viera, Chicago Tribune
Review by Britt Julious, ARTWRIT.com Volume IV 2010.
“Objects only make sense in relation to thinking, speaking subjects; things are evanescent, multistable appearences; and matter as we have known since the ancient materialists is a lyric substance.” - W.J.T. Mitchell
I try to assemble pictures that want to engage in picture making. By collecting objects that go together I create a series of functional, aesthetic and cultural relationships between the constituent parts. The pieces relate to the space they inhabit, helping to emphasize the importance of context to a picture’s reception. The work uses familiar and whimsical materials to emulate familiar devices of presentation like stage sets, billboards, architecture, furniture or altars. These shifting material relationships use the effects of light and solidity, transparency and screening, layering parts that each contribute to the overall experience of contingency in the work. Materially through the affects of light and quirky material choices the objects begin to reassert wonder as an approach to object relations. My work is in part about how thinking, feeling subjects interact with and interpret the physical world of objects to ascribe them meaning.
The Poor Farm, Manawa, WI
August 2010
Above: Dan Gunn, Wood floors for the basement, Red Oak and polyurethane, 16" x 24", 2010.
The Great Poor Farm Experiment II + All Over the Map
Private view, August 6 – 8, 2010
Exhibitions by appointment: August 9, 2010 — June 1, 2011
E6325 County Highway BB
Manawa, WI 54949
http://www.poorfarmexperiment.org/
The Great Poor Farm Experiment II includes contributions by...
John Neff
Amy Yao
Sabina Ott
Nicholas Frank
Olivier Mossett
Gerold Miller
Tyson Reeder
Milwaukee International
Keil Borrman
Doug Ischar
Amy Granat & Emily Sundblad
Paul Druecke
Ian Hokin
Magalie Guérin Sean Ward
Winslow Smith
Dan Gunn
Karolina Gnatowski
Maxon Higbee
Pedro Velez
Yogi Proctor
Charles Mahaffee
Richard Galling
Kimberly Miller
and Summer School
+
ALL OVER THE MAP
All Over The Map: A Festschrift Exhibition for Moira Roth's 77th Birthday is a year-long exhibition honoring the extraordinary work of this art historian, poet, and artist. The exhibition is culled from a weekend-long event of both formal and impromptu installations and performances that will take place at The Poor Farm in July 2010.
All Over The Map will feature artworks, installations, artifacts, and collections. It will also include a series of other exhibitions curated by Moira and Annika Marie e.g. Room of Memory, The Poor Farm: Fragments of a History, together with the traveling exhibition of The Library of Maps (that includes Moira’s poems and Slobodan Dan Paich’s Drawings).
Milwaukee Avenue Art Festival
July 2010
Above left: Dan Gunn. Above Right: Derek Chan and Roxanne Hopper.
Below Left: Rusty Shackleford and Curt Bozif. Below Right: Cole Pierce.
Danny Think Tank will feature recent work of 11 Chicago based artists, showcasing a survey of contemporary practices. The ongoing dialogue within Danny Think Tank will guide the curatorial decisions as the group responds to the unique location. The exhibition will take place in a vacant loft/apartment, exhibiting a collection of paintings, photography, collage, sculpture and video.
Milwaukee Ave Art Fest July 23-252628 N. Milwaukee Ave, 2nd floor (apartment above Disco City)
Chicago, IL
Friday - Opening 6-10pm
Sat & Sun noon-11pm
Curt Bozif
Derek Chan
Ryan Fenchel
Dan Gunn
Roxane Hopper
Lisa Majer
Stephen Nyktas
Cole Pierce
Julie Rudder
Kendrick Shackleford
Craig Yu
For more information about the Festival:
the Loyola University Museum of Art
Summer 2010
New Icon
June 5 – August 1, 2010
Opening: June 4, 5:30 – 7:30*
Presented by the Contemporary Arts Council
Loyola University Museum of Art
820 North Michigan Avenue, Chicago, IL 60611
New Icon, a group exhibition curated by Britton Bertran and sponsored by the Contemporary Art Council. The artists featured in New Icon include Zachary Buchner, Pamela Fraser, Carrie Gundersdorf, Dan Gunn, Diana Guerrero-Maciá, Brennan McGaffey, William J. O’Brien, Sze Lin Pang, and Kevin Wolff.
Read reviews of the show...
“New Icon / Critic’s Picks” by Michelle Grabner, Artforum.com July 2010
“A Usually Pictorial Representation” by Erik Wenzel, ArtSlant.com June 28, 2010
“New Icon / Review” by Spencer Drew in Newcity Magazine, June 21st 2010.
“New Icon” by Lauren Weinberg, Time Out Chicago, June 17th 2010
"Top five shows of the year that I went to" by Steve Ruiz, Chicago Art Review
For more information:
http://www.luc.edu/luma/flash/new_icon.html
Sponsored by the Contemprary Arts Council
http://www.contemporaryartscouncil.org/
with Lloyd Dobler Gallery
Spring 2010
Come see my work at Lloyd Dobler Gallery's booth #9050 at the NEXT FAIR, Part of Goffo. with Hector Arce Espasas, Eric Guerrero, James Kao and Sebastian Vallejo.
www.lloyddoblergallery.com
Lloyd Dobler Gallery
Summer 2009
Middleground
June 12 - July 25, 2009
Opening Reception: Friday June 12, 6-10pm
Works by: Jerome Acks, Dan Gunn, Michael Hunter, and Andrea Myers
SideCar Gallery
Fall 2009
Saturday October 24th, 2009
Opening Reception 5-9 pm
Works by: Dan Gunn, Karolina Gnatowski,Sara Hicks, Chris Miller, Jeremy Price, Bob Reinard, Jeremy Somer and Mindy Schwartz.
Curated by Mike Kaysen and Carl Baratta
Side Car Gallery
411 Huehn St.
Hammond, IN.
sidecargallery@gmail.com
Hours: Saturday - Sunday 12 -4pm.
Hyde Park Art Center
Fall 2009
The Debut of "Artists Run Chicago Digest"
Sunday November 8th, 2009
Opening Reception: Hyde Park Art Center
threewalls and The Green Lantern Press are pleased to announce our latest publishing collaboration, The Artist’s Run Chicago Digest, a complimentary publication to the exhibition Artist’s Run Chicago (curated by Britton Bertran and Allison Peters Quinn) at the Hyde Park Art Center, May 10th-July 5th, 2009.
The ARC Digest is meant to archive in print the activities of Chicago’s artist-run spaces between 1999-2009. It acts both as a companion to the exhibition and an extension of that project with interviews by Dan Gunn, essays by Abigail Satinsky, The Pond, Scott Speh and John Neff, Mary Jane Jacob and Lori Waxman, and an accompanying audio program by Bad At Sports featuring an interview with Temporary Services and a panel of Chicago artist-run media organizers..Interviews, essays and responses along with floorplans, exhibition histories and other visuals archive and present a 10-year time period in Chicago’s artist-run culture while providing history, reflection, critique and dialog about artist-run culture, its importance, difficulties, sustainability and necessity as well as its specificity to a community and generation..