The work of Bruno Dunley questions the specificity of painting, particularly in relation to representation and materiality. His paintings depart from carefully constructed compositions, gradually undergoing corrections and alterations which, at times, reveal the lacunae in the apparent continuity of perception. Part of a new generation of Brazilian painters called 2008, Dunley begins both from found images as well as from the analysis of the nature of painting, in which language codes such as gesture, plane, surface, and representation are understood as an alphabet, a common ground. As stated by the artist “I see my work as a series of questions and affirmations about the possibilities of painting, about its essence and our expectations of it.” In the work of Dunley, promises are made and consequently broken, testing the limits of the viewer’s tension. Preconceived notions of painting and composition, in the work of the artist, are incessantly challenged in surprising ways.

 

text: Nara Roesler gallery