Essay

Dan Gunn: of the land behind them by Jade Powers

Ten years after the debut of Dan Gunn’s Patchwork Plateau (2011) at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, this work sits front and center in the most recent solo exhibition of Gunn’s work of the land behind them at Monique Meloche Gallery. Patchwork Plateau provides a first glimmer into Gunn’s interest in landscape and craft that is fully formed in the works presented in this exhibition. A mobile hangs above a section of Patchwork Plateau, a table-like wooden sculpture. Complete with diamond shaped mirrored Plexi, this portion of the work resembles the design of a court jester’s costume. The placement of Patchwork Plateau allows Gunn’s Suitcase Acts (2019) works to be right in the line of sight. Named after the carnival term where a performer must fit their entire act into one suitcase that they carry with them, Gunn’s pieces hold cast ceramic replicas of old collectable items like golf balls, bottles, pieces of twine, clown figurines, small boats, and fish. The viewer finds themselves looking closer at these works imagining what type of act this performer has planned while also thinking about the history of what people choose to collect and the ways Gunn has used his interest in craft to create them. The works in of the land behind them showcase the different ways Dan Gunn is interested in conversations about performance and representation.

Paradise Scenery (2020), one of Gunn’s newest low-relief wooden sculptures and the focal point in the central gallery, engages in dialogue about the ways humans interact with nature and questions mythologies that portray the Midwest as wholesome, idyllic, and pastoral. In the foreground of this lush pastoral scene is rich green space with a winding river breaking up the landscape and vibrant red and pink hues for the sky, sun, and sun’s reflection. This large-scale work highlights Gunn’s ability to manipulate wood to mimic the appearance of draped fabric. Playing with dimension and flatness, Gunn has added three-dimensional elements resembling the American folk-art practice ‘bird tree’1, where several sculptural birds are sitting on tree

1 An artform with a long history within the Pennsylvania German community. Depicting birds and trees was meant to represent rebirth and renewal. Stacy C. Hollander, “Bird Tree,” in American Anthem: Masterworks from the American Folk Art Museum (New York: Harry N. Abrams in association with American Folk Art Museum, 2001), 346.

Commenting on representation, this beautiful depiction has subtle hints to human interaction seen in the tree stumps in the right corner and the pink smoke cloud towards the middle of the wall relief. Another addition to this series is the opening between the two central wooden panels where the white of the gallery wall breaks up the picturesque scene. By doing this, Gunn reminds the viewer that this is an illusion; that this beautiful lush green scape complete with birds, calm river, and beautiful sun is just one view of this landscape, the cut down trees and pink smoke cloud another view. Created around the same time as Paradise Scenery and part of a traveling exhibition, The Regional, co-organized by the Contemporary Art Center, Cincinnati, and Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, Wetland Scenery (2020) is another example of how Gunn uses trompe-l’œil techniques (“optical illusions”) to demonstrate that perception is not always reality. For Gunn, the Midwest is complex and intriguing and through his depiction of these idealized landscapes the viewer must spend additional time finding all the hidden details he incorporates to discuss his complex feelings towards the region and its traditionalist ideals. Highlighting the juxtaposition of the myths of the “untapped Midwestern landscape” and the ability to build with the resources in the area, Gunn uses the lack of physical human representation in Paradise Scenery to discuss the different ways people interact with land.

Further in the galleries hangs Gunn’s collage pieces that use aged and nostalgic magazines, catalogs, and coffee table books as source material. Leavings No. 3 (2022) is a collage work with a wooden stained virtually monochromatic frame where almost every animal depicted has fully dilated eyes that suggest the viewer is being watched. The images of a cowboy on horseback and another horse further down in the collage keep close Gunn’s roots in conversations related to Midwestern ideology both real and imagined. True to his inspiration in Surrealism, these works are intuitive and speak to what Gunn was thinking at the time of their creation. Possibly thinking about how the Midwest is represented, the cowboy calls to mind people searching West and the world watching them do so through American Western television shows and movies. This series also highlights Gunn’s interest in craft; the use of humble materials like magazines, wood, and stain to create these works elevate conversations of craft and its place as a legitimate art form. The idealized Midwestern experience presented in Leavings No. 3 serves as a memory of time past and the choice to have both the cowboy in the distance and the horse facing away from the viewer indicate that this narrative might no longer (or never did) represent the Midwestern region of America.

Moderntone, Pitcher with punch cups (Amethyst), 2022 (detail)

of the land behind them showcases the different ways Dan Gunn grapples with ideologies about the Midwest, representation of nostalgic imagery, and feelings of performance as well as how he uses humble materials as his chosen media to show his dedication to the importance of craft as an art form. He looks to the performative elements of what makes the Midwest significant whether it be depictions of cowboys and exaggerated eyes to discuss how people see this particular part of America in Leaving No. 3 (2022), the subtle depiction of human’s interaction with nature in Paradise Scenery (2022), the nostalgic element of gray color collectables in the Suitcase Acts (2019) series, or the malleability and playfulness of the way Gunn can manipulate wood to mimic the graceful characteristics of tapestry shown in Patchwork Plateau (2011). Throughout this exhibition and with his chosen media, Gunn negotiates representations of the Midwest and the significance of nostalgia while questioning how the Midwest has developed since the inception of past ideologies of the region.