Carroll Dunham

Carroll Dunham

Carroll Dunham - Galerie Max Hetzler Selected Works
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Since the 1970s, Carroll Dunham (b. 1949) has developed a unique pictorial language in a significant oeuvre encompassing painting, drawing, print and sculpture. Employing a formal mastery of line, texture and colour, Dunham’s distinctive body of work continually engages new and recurring modes of art-making.

Drawing on the art historical canon but also on pop culture including sci-fi and cartoons, Dunham revisits enduring themes that comprise our existence — trees, guns, the planet, bathers and wrestlers amongst others — while simultaneously exploring the formal attributes of painting. Riding the line between abstraction and figuration, planes of strong colour and Dunham’s curvilinear line activate the energetically-charged works.

Through anthropomorphic forms, vivid abstractions, surreal landscapes and archetypal figures, the artist demonstrates his fascination and unique ability to play with scale, orientation and composition to give physical form to psychologically challenging imagery. Dunham’s careful choreography provides insight into his subjects’ complex internal world.

‘Dunham’s paintings conjure everyday realities as both more and less than real; the so-called ordinary is unfamiliar, new terrain, politically, sexually, environmentally. Fictional portraits of the known moving into an unknown, they show vivacity, even about the incapacity to know the future. I mean, they have a vitality, these frank, beautiful misfits, or funny, smart disturbances. Not stories but wordless pictures.’

Lynne Tillman, 2016

Image: Qualiascope: Female and Male kept together, 2020–2022, urethane, water soluble crayon and pencil on gessoed linen, 208.6 x 241.3 cm.; 82 x 95 in.; 228.3 x 261.3 x 7.3 cm.; 89 7/8 x 102 7/8 x 2 7/8 in. (framed)

Interview

Selected Works

Green Hills of Earth (1), 2017

Bather/Night, 2009

Integration, 1991
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Solo Exhibitions

Carroll Dunham - Galerie Max Hetzler

Selected Drawings

Bleibtreustraße 15/16, Berlin

25 January – 25 February 2023
Carroll Dunham - Galerie Max Hetzler

Somatic Transmission & Qualiascope (Recent Paintings)

57, rue du Temple, Paris

30 April – 4 June 2022
Carroll Dunham | Albert Oehlen - Galerie Max Hetzler

Carroll Dunham | Albert Oehlen

41 Dover Street, London

4 May – 16 June 2021
Carroll Dunham | Michael Williams - Galerie Max Hetzler

Carroll Dunham | Michael Williams

Drawings
curated by Cornelius Tittel

Bleibtreustraße 45, Berlin

23 November 2019 – 11 January 2020

Selected Institutional Exhibitions

Carroll Dunham / Albert Oehlen. Bäume / Trees

Carroll Dunham / Albert Oehlen. Bäume / Trees

Sprengel Museum Hannover, Hanover

13 June – 18 October 2020
Carroll Dunham / Albert Oehlen: Bäume / Trees

Carroll Dunham / Albert Oehlen: Bäume / Trees

Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf

30 November 2019 – 1 March 2020
Drawings: Carroll Dunham

Drawings: Carroll Dunham

Denver Art Museum, Denver

27 July 2014 – 15 February 2015
Carroll Dunham

Carroll Dunham Prints: A Survey

Addison Gallery of American Art, Phillips Academy, Andover

3 May – 13 July 2008
Carroll Dunham

Carroll Dunham Prints: A Survey

Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin College, Oberlin

5 February – 23 March 2008
Carroll Dunham

Small Drawings 1991-2005

Drammens Museum, Drammen

18 May – 24 September 2006
Carroll Dunham

Paintings

New Museum, New York

31 October 2002 – 2 February 2003

Biography

Show Vita
Show Selected Bibliography

Videos

Adam Pendleton

INTERVIEW: CARROLL DUNHAM

on the occasion of the solo exhibition ‘Somatic Transmission & Qualiascope (Recent Paintings)’ at Galerie Max Hetzler

57, rue du Temple, Paris

17 May 2022
Adam Pendleton

In conversation: Carroll Dunham and Mark Godfrey

on the occasion of "Carroll Dunham | Albert Oehlen" at Galerie Max Hetzler, London

9 June 2021
Adam Pendleton

Carroll Dunham/Albert Oehlen. Bäume/Trees

at Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, 2019/2020; © Kunsthalle Düsseldorf

9 December 2019
Adam Pendleton

Tuesday Evenings at the Modern

Laurie Simmons and Carroll Dunham

Modern Art Museum of Forth Worth, Fort Worth

13 November 2018
Adam Pendleton

Into Words: Carroll Dunham in Conversation with Scott Rothkopf

Courtesy the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

26 October 2017

Publications

Carroll Dunham: Selected Drawings - Galerie Max Hetzler

Carroll Dunham: Selected Drawings

Exhibition Poster
2023

€ 10.00

Selected Press

Blau Spring-Summer 2022

Frog April 2022

New Yorker April 2022

The Art Newspaper June 2021

BLAU International 2019

The New York Times September 2018

The Brooklyn Rail November 2016

Art in America January 2016

ARTnews December 2015

Art in America March 2012

Village Voice March 2007

BOMB Magazine 1990

News

Carroll Dunham

Where am I? Prints 1985–2022 (solo show)
Nasjonalmuseet Oslo
3 February – 21 May 2023

The first museum presentation of Carroll Dunham’s prints in Scandinavia will take place at the National Museum of Oslo in February 2023 and will be the second exhibition in the museum’s newly inaugurated space for exhibitions of prints and drawings. With as many as 161 prints, this exhibition ...
Carroll Dunham

André Butzer, Carroll Dunham et al.

Mix & Match. Die Sammlung neu entdecken (group show)
Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich
30 March 2022 – 14 January 2024

Work by André Butzer and Carroll Dunham is included in Mix & Match. Die Sammlung neu entdecken at the Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich. Celebrating the institution’s 20th anniversary, the exhibition presents some 350 works and series in a new display which spans 120 years of art history. ...
André Butzer, Carroll Dunham

Carroll Dunham et al.

Art on Paper since 1960: The Hamish Parker Collection (group show)
British Museum, London
22 September 2022 – 25 March 2023

Carroll Dunham’s work Recto, 1989, is part of the group show Art on Paper since 1960: The Hamish Parker Collection, at the British Museum in London. Comprising over 100 prints and drawings, the exhibition presents a selection of works on paper donated by Hamish Parker, a longtime supporter of the ...
Carroll Dunham

Giulia Andreani, Carroll Dunham et al.

The Drawing Centre Show (group show)
Le Consortium, Dijon
1 July 2022 – 22 January 2023

Works by Giulia Andreani and Carroll Dunham are included in the group exhibition The Drawing Centre Show, on view at Le Consortium, Dijon from 1 July, 2022 until 22 January, 2023. The exhibition, organised by curators Seungduk Kim and Franck Gautherot, and artists Tobias Pils and Joe Bradley, ...
Giulia Andreani, Carroll Dunham