On the occassion of Carroll Dunham, Where am I?, an exhibition celebrating the artist's prints at the Nasjonalmuseet in Oslo, Two Palms is pleased to present a group of the artist's etching portfolios, including the never before seen Negatives.
Dunham’s prints show considerable range in their expressivity, motifs, and themes. Inspired by his surroundings, personal experience, art history, and pop culture, he directs his gaze at subjects large and small—everything from science fiction and the infinity of the universe to the physical body and the representation of leaves on a tree.
Dunham often works in series and has a fondness for print portfolios that gather individual prints together into an inclusive whole. Dunham is especially known for his series Bathers, Wrestlers, and Trees, with pictures rooted in art history, pop culture, and the artist’s personal life.
In the late 2000s, the female bather enters Dunham’s work, a theme with a long tradition in the history of art.
Dunham's highly personal style is characterized by biomorphic and cartoonish figures that have evolved into vivid nudes with graphically rendered genitalia set in fantastical, saturated landscapes. Dunham’s works are an exercise in mining the subconscious with his figures often engaging in violent or sexually suggestive actions. He has stated that these figures are subjects that allow him to make paintings, objects around which he can delineate space and explore perspective.
Printmaking provides an almost infinite variety of ways that images can be manifest in physical terms, which then goes to the idea of changing the way you can make a painting, changing all kinds of things.
- Carroll Dunham
