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Kyle Dunn — Dirt God
Kyle Dunn

Dirt God

2020

Dirt God announces itself through texture before color, its acrylic surface built across an epoxy resin and foam panel that gives the work an almost geological presence. Kyle Dunn exploits the dimensional depth of this unconventional substrate to evoke something primal and elemental, conjuring imagery rooted in earth, myth, and the organic cycles that underpin human experience. The title itself is loaded with deliberate contradiction, yoking the abject and the sacred in a pairing that characterizes much of Dunn's practice, where the lowly and the transcendent are treated as inseparable. Working within a lineage of painters who take materiality seriously as a carrier of meaning, Dunn constructs surfaces that reward sustained looking. The epoxy resin ground lends Dirt God a luminous, almost amber quality beneath the acrylic passages, so that light appears to emanate from within the panel rather than simply reflecting off it. This interplay between translucency and opacity gives the work a restless, living quality, as though something beneath the surface is pressing upward toward visibility. At 109.2 by 162.6 centimeters, the work commands physical space without overwhelming it, sitting comfortably within a domestic or institutional setting while retaining genuine pictorial authority. Signed by the artist and offered through P.P.O.W, the New York gallery that has long championed Dunn's work, Dirt God represents a strong example of his ongoing investigation into matter, mythology, and the fertile ground where the two converge.

Medium
Acrylic on epoxy resin and foam panel
Overall
Signed
Yes

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About this work

Kyle Dunn, Dirt God, 2020

Dirt God announces itself through texture before color, its acrylic surface built across an epoxy resin and foam panel that gives the work an almost geological presence. Kyle Dunn exploits the dimensional depth of this unconventional substrate to evoke something primal and elemental, conjuring imagery rooted in earth, myth, and the organic cycles that underpin human experience. The title itself is loaded with deliberate contradiction, yoking the abject and the sacred in a pairing that characterizes much of Dunn's practice, where the lowly and the transcendent are treated as inseparable. Working within a lineage of painters who take materiality seriously as a carrier of meaning, Dunn constructs surfaces that reward sustained looking. The epoxy resin ground lends Dirt God a luminous, almost amber quality beneath the acrylic passages, so that light appears to emanate from within the panel rather than simply reflecting off it. This interplay between translucency and opacity gives the work a restless, living quality, as though something beneath the surface is pressing upward toward visibility. At 109.2 by 162.6 centimeters, the work commands physical space without overwhelming it, sitting comfortably within a domestic or institutional setting while retaining genuine pictorial authority. Signed by the artist and offered through P.P.O.W, the New York gallery that has long championed Dunn's work, Dirt God represents a strong example of his ongoing investigation into matter, mythology, and the fertile ground where the two converge.

Medium
Acrylic on epoxy resin and foam panel
Dimensions
overall: 109.2 x 162.6 x 5.1 cm
Year
2020
Signed
Hand-signed by the artist
Seen at
P.P.O.W

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