HARTFORD, CONN.- The Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art presents figurative painter Kyle Dunn in his first museum exhibition featuring recent works and new paintings created in response to the museum’s extraordinary collection. This exhibition is the 194th in the nearly 50-year-old MATRIX contemporary art series at the Wadsworth. Kyle Dunn / MATRIX 194 is on view June 7 – September 1, 2024.

“Kyle Dunn’s exciting work proves the continued relevance of figurative painting to address contemporary experiences, identities, and relationships. Setting art history in dialogue with the present moment, Dunn represents the best of the MATRIX program, and I’m thrilled to share his work with our visitors this summer,” said Jared Quinton, Emily Hall Tremaine Associate Curator of Contemporary Art.

Dunn’s paintings dramatize themes of intimacy and alienation in domestic scenes set against city backdrops that blend surrealism and modernism with hints of popular culture and cinema. Spatially ambiguous settings collapse interior and exterior worlds often referencing Dunn’s studio. His scenes are cinematic, with some figures sitting alone in quiet contemplation, while others are seemingly caught in the aftermath of romantic encounters or perhaps in anticipation of them. Moments of still life and trompe l’oeil puncture the compositions adding subtle humor, subversive messages, and nods to art history. His technique calls to mind great American realist painters like Edward Hopper and Andrew Wyeth, as well as the magical realism (and unapologetic gayness) of Paul Cadmus, George Tooker, and Pavel Tchelitchew. Dunn’s work is at once familiar and disquieting, timeless and unavoidably of the moment.

Kyle Dunn lives and works in Brooklyn, NY, and received a BFA in Interdisciplinary Sculpture from the Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore, MD. His work has been included in exhibitions at P·P·O·W, New York, NY; Marlborough Gallery, London, UK; GRIMM, Amsterdam, the Netherlands; Maria Bernheim, Zurich, Switzerland; and Galerie Judin, Berlin, Germany; among others. His work is in the collections of the Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, TX; the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami, FL; the Sunpride Foundation, Kowloon, Hong Kong; and X Museum, Beijing, China. In 2022, his work was exhibited at the ICA, Miami, FL, in Fire Figure Fantasy: Selections from ICA Miami’s Collection. Dunn has been featured in various publications including The New York Times, AnOther Magazine, W Magazine, and Juxtapoz among others.