Dan Gunn at Lloyd Dobler Gallery

Published in Time Out Chicago / Issue 292 : Sep 30–Oct 6, 2010 

A disappointing sense of nostalgia and lack of critical inquiry have pervaded this year’s local painting exhibitions, such as Columbia College’s “Let There Be Geo,” making Dan Gunn’s self-aware reassessment of the medium most welcome. Unlike many Chicago artists, Gunn simultaneously makes a case for painting’s relevancy and acknowledges its ambiguous role in 21st-century art.

This show’s titular piece spirals across Lloyd Dobler’s floor as a chain of paintings of varying heights, connected with tiny brass hinges. Gunn applies different materials, colors and surfaces to each panel: One resembles a latticed gate spray-painted green; another, a towering white picket fence with a small window cut out. Gauzy emerald-green fabric stretches taut over a third’s wooden frame, and a fourth incorporates crumpled tinfoil. All are done in an unassuming DIY style, which reminds viewers these paintings are three-dimensional objects.

Gunn has toyed with the line between 2-D picture and 3-D object for the past three years, leaning previous works against the wall. His new piece Falling Starfield extends a long, thin finger upward from the rectangular bounds of its frame. Multistable Picture Fable allows viewers to engage it in physical space, recalling the human scale of much late-1960s Minimalist sculpture.

When you step into the hallway outside the gallery, your eyes instantly register Multistable’s echo in the strips of wood paneling that follow the spiral staircase out into the street. The best part of Gunn’s new work is the way his panels seem to pass motifs among each other like a hidden code, pulling patterns and materials from the outside world.

- CW