Carroll Dunham: Recent Paintings

Galerie Eva Presenhuber presents the solo exhibition by the American artist Carroll Dunham.

Dunham’s new Wrestlers paintings depict two nude men, who closely resemble each other, trying to pin each other down in an ongoing brawl, neither seeming to prevail. The only distinctions from work to work are the chokeholds and other dynamic postures in which one of the wrestlers temporarily overcomes the other.

Accordingly, the surrounding minimalistic landscapes seem dateless and placeless. The timeless nature of these depictions can also be said for the motif itself: wrestling features in mythological narratives and often symbolizes two powers – good and evil – fighting each other. More recently, wrestling refers to a biographical fact of Dunham’s real and not at all mythological childhood in Connecticut where he used to wrestle his brother. This begs the question of whether the two wrestlers are brothers or enemies – or both.