Kyle Dunn American, b. 1990
"Dunn's relief paintings are acts of quiet seduction — intimate, psychologically loaded, and formally daring, they hover between painting and sculpture, desire and melancholy, in a space that is entirely his own."
Kyle Dunn (born 1990, Livonia, Michigan) is an American painter and sculptor based in Queens, New York, whose sensuous relief paintings have established him as one of the most compelling emerging voices in contemporary figurative art. Working in paint with three-dimensional sculptural additions to the canvas surface, Dunn depicts men as subjects of desire in intimate, psychologically charged scenes where private and public life blur. His elongated figures, evocative colour, and shifting perspectives create wall works of rare emotional directness. He is represented by P·P·O·W (New York) and Vielmetter (Los Angeles), and his work is held at the Dallas Museum of Art, the ICA Miami, and the Wadsworth Atheneum.
"I want the figure in the painting to look back at you — to refuse to be only an object. There is always an exchange happening, a negotiation of power and vulnerability."
Kyle Dunn was born in 1990 in Livonia, Michigan. He received his BFA in Interdisciplinary Sculpture from the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) in Baltimore — a formation that gave him the technical grounding for the three-dimensional relief work that would become central to his practice. He subsequently moved to Queens, New York, where he continues to live and work.
Dunn's paintings occupy a liminal space between painting and sculpture. He applies paint to canvas in the conventional manner, then adds sculpted elements — raised surfaces, protruding forms — that cause his works to project physically from the wall, casting real shadows and inviting tactile attention. His imagery is consistently intimate and charged: scenes of domestic life, moments of private vulnerability, figures encountered in the shared spaces of contemporary urban existence.
His central subject is the male figure as an object of desire and psychological complexity. His men are never simply decorative; they carry emotional weight, and their relationship to the viewer is always ambiguous — inviting and withholding, exposed and defended. The elongation of his figures and the dreamlike quality of his colour recall the figurative traditions of Egon Schiele and Eric Fischl, filtered through the visual culture of contemporary gay life.
In 2024, Dunn presented his first institutional solo exhibition, Kyle Dunn / MATRIX 194, at the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art in Hartford, Connecticut. His work is held at the Dallas Museum of Art, the Institute of Contemporary Art Miami, the Sunpride Foundation (Hong Kong), the Wadsworth Atheneum, and the X Museum (Beijing).
Major exhibitions: P·P·O·W, New York (solo exhibitions); Vielmetter, Los Angeles; Marlborough Gallery, London; Stephen Friedman Gallery, London; Galerie Judin, Berlin; MATRIX 194, Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford (2024).
Works in public collections: Dallas Museum of Art; Institute of Contemporary Art Miami; Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art; Sunpride Foundation, Hong Kong; X Museum, Beijing.
Selected press: Artforum, ArtReview, Frieze, The Art Newspaper.