Carroll Dunham: Paintings

The extensive oeuvre of the American painter Carroll Dunham has infused the discussion about representation versus abstraction with new life, at the same time pointing to a number of directions in 20th century painting such as Surrealism, Action Painting, Abstract Painting and Pop Art. His unusual, original color compositions and independent use of forms and materials had a significant influence on artists like Fred Tomaselli and Mathew Ritchie. In Dunham's works, pictorial elements reminiscent of cartoons became recognizable details within an enlivened, abstract picture surface as early as the beginning of the eighties. Later in the decade, Dunham turned to larger formats, painting the expanses of his canvases with visually constant forms in fluid gesture. Bodily shapes, reduced to pictographs, repulsive-looking, hairy and resembling tumours, teeth or lips, in expressionist colors and exhibiting an impressive painterly quality, Recently, his pictures have become distinctly more figurative and show aggressive male and female caricatures, with buildings, planets and boats, too, becoming vehicles of human emotions and unbridled primary energies.