Bunt Scenery (SW), 2019 Acrylic, stain, furniture finish on maple and birch plywood with nylon rope. 40 x 66 inches.
Dan Gunn “Bunts”
November 11, 2019 - January 12, 2020
University Club of Chicago
Viewings by appointment.
*The University Club of Chicago is a member’s only, please contact me to arrange to see the show. Email dan@dangunn.com to arrange a viewing.
The Club will host an artist’s talk on December 9th.
A solo exhibition of new work, Dan Gunn “Bunts” refers awkwardly both to the ‘bunting’ of draped fabric for festive decorations and to the gentle yet strategic baseball maneuver. The work continues the ‘Scenery’ series and runs the length of the University Club’s twelfth-floor gallery. Created out of cut pieces of plywood that are laced back together with cord, the works are both flat while picturing dimensionality and whole while existing in a multitude of parts. As objects, they mimic aprons, tablecloths, or quilts. For this exhibition, the works also include inset sunflowers that arc from east to west across the gallery.
Elsewhere in the club lurks “The Ungrateful Son No. 5”, a ceramic frog from “The Ungrateful Son” series. These floor lamps are larger than life-size, hand-built, stoneware toads with embedded glowing marbles. Drawing their title from the Grimm Brother’s fairytale #145, the floor lamps are meant to be both menacing and quaint in equal measure. The many-eyed frogs harbor associations with apocalyptic Biblical plagues and the American Arts and Crafts movement.
