Galerie Max Hetzler, London</a>, is pleased to present Open Studio &amp; Empty Spaces, an exhibition of new paintings and works on paper by Carroll <a target="_blank" href=https://www.mutualart.com/Gallery/Galerie-Max-Hetzler--London/"/Artist/Carroll-Dunham/17A94FFF651FC061">Dunham. This is the artist’s fifth presentation with the gallery, including two duo shows, and the second in the London space.</p><p>Dunham has developed a unique pictorial language encompassing painting, drawing, printmaking and sculpture over several decades. Engaging line, colour and form to activate his energetically charged works, the artist creates a fantastical universe populated by humanoid figures who seem to exist outside the limitations of time and place. These long-haired, unclothed specimens have been an ongoing primary subject in Dunham’s oeuvre over the last fifteen years.</p><p>The exhibition presents eight large-scale paintings from 2024 and ten drawings from 2023, which centre around the artist’s studio. In Dunham’s ‘Open Studio’ paintings, an earthling sculptor on an unknown planet is visited by two purple denizens – one male, one female. Highly schematic, the works offer a culmination of the compositional principles the artist has been exploring for more than five decades: archetypal bodies, framing devices, marginalia and isometric space construction. Within his wood-panelled studio, the sculptor makes his objects, as the purple nudes look on bemused. The crisp geometry of the interior scene is at odds with its surrounding landscape. Demarcated by a curved, planetary horizon line, the space is littered with curly cubes and swirling lines, in a state Dunham describes as a 'conflation of mechanical and organic things’.</p><p>The paintings are divided into four daytime and four nighttime scenes. In the former, against a bright blue sky, seven blackbirds swoop around the studio space. In the latter, set within the celestial array, a dog comes to visit. In these works, different levels of the gaze are at play: the animals observe the humanoids, who watch the sculptor, who contemplates his own creation. In turn, we – the viewer voyeur – adopt the role of outsider looking in. In a few of the works, the dog looks out directly towards the viewer meeting our gaze. Dunham’s careful choreography provides insight into his subjects’ complex internal world, while his colour choices expose and question stereotypes concerning race, ethnicity and human nature. Denoting a sense of otherness, the vibrant purple in the present series is inspired by science-fiction and mythology.</p><p>The influence of Dunham’s drawing and printmaking practice is evident in the bold outlines, flat planes of colour, areas of transparency and layering, and distinctive curvilinear lines. ‘Everything I do is built from lines,’ the artist states. ‘Even the birds, which are really just sheets of paint. The blackbirds start out as line drawings and then I take a big brush and paint them. The whole thing is a structure of lines. And it goes down to a really microlevel like the way I draw hair.’ For Dunham, image-making has always been a matter of method (the how) over subject (the what). In these works, he seeks an to approach painting which is analogous to the playful experimentation of his drawing technique.</p><p><br></p>" itemprop="description" />