Skip to main content
Want more images or videos?
Request additional images or videos from the seller
1 of 5

Adam Gunn
One Damn Thing After Another

2016

$4,200
£3,158.06
€3,667.28
CA$5,865.21
A$6,504.95
CHF 3,416.08
MX$79,885.46
NOK 43,244.37
SEK 40,780.02
DKK 27,361.91
Shipping
Retrieving quote...
The 1stDibs Promise:
Authenticity Guarantee,
Money-Back Guarantee,
24-Hour Cancellation

About the Item

Messages in a Bottle Text by Cameron Skene “Metaphysics is a dark ocean without shores or lighthouse, strewn with many a philosophic wreck.” - Immanuel Kant A recent online story in the German news outlet Deustche Welle posted a video of a boy’s lost waterproof camera which slipped off a rock on a Yorkshire, UK beach and rode the currents 800 kilometers across the North Sea, where it was found on the shore of a German island. The footage recovered from the camera (which was initially balanced on the rock while the boy and his sister played) recorded their 11-minute bout of distracted meandering in and out of the field of vision. Other figures enter and exit, pausing to contemplate the scenery until near the end of the clip, where the tide sucks the camera into the sea. Then, the fun begins. Swirls of seaweed and ocean junk float in and out of the lens’ periphery in a muted, fleshy kaleidoscope. Ragged, half-torn shapes bunch together and break apart in the murk; recorded gurgling sounds evoke an unsteady, synesthetic reverie. Gunn’s pieces harbor a muted, oceanic palette, possibly derived from his experience growing up on the east coast of Canada. However, the works have a more accurate purchase on still life, with more flotsam than ocean. An improvised but disciplined approach to the base elements of each piece allows the artist to access sub-genres as varied as seaborne junk drifting across a submerged camera lens. Gunn references some of the idioms of the ‘lesser’ arts: drifting mineral and vegetal forms are denoted with a brisk painterly touch that recall more vernacular approaches like rose mauling on rounded surfaces, or reverse landscape paintings on convex glass. Intuitively conceived and carefully constructed, the irregular, rounded substrates sport smooth concave surfaces, eliciting demi-objects that emerge and retreat like quantum particles in a field. These kinetically engaged forms dance on the skin of the painted surface and interact with the peripheral tension of the shaped edge. In works like Wave After Wave (2016): an uprooted Christmas tree appears. In others: vegetal remnants. Furry things. Squiggly things. Smooth things. Fragments of things. Meaty bits of dashed-off paint that hover on the surface: a stand-in for other things. In tighter works like Deep Down (2016), the figure hovers in a force field of surface and ground: a densely knit, wet disco ball of emergent forms. The Origin of the Universe (2016), singular in its thinglessness, with its vaguely vaginal nod to Courbet, coaxes the viewer to nestle in the void of unrequited expectation. The exhibition title, Anyplace, Anytime, for No Reason At All, is lifted from an interview with Frank Zappa, describing his compositional method, which puts an emphasis on a rigorous technical competence combined with a loose assemblage of approach. The quote finishes with, “I think with an aesthetic like that you can have a pretty good latitude for being creative”. Gunn’s transcription of that approach provides a persuasive proposal of how a painting can be an aperture into an ocean of aesthetic inventiveness.
  • Creator:
    Adam Gunn (1977, Canadian)
  • Creation Year:
    2016
  • Dimensions:
    Height: 58 in (147.32 cm)Width: 60 in (152.4 cm)
  • Medium:
  • Movement & Style:
  • Period:
  • Condition:
  • Gallery Location:
    Montreal, CA
  • Reference Number:
    1stDibs: LU4762367063

More From This Seller

View All
The Other Side of The Sky
By Adam Gunn
Located in Montreal, Quebec
“Metaphysics is a dark ocean without shores or lighthouse, strewn with many a philosophic wreck.” – Immanuel Kant A recent online story in the German news outlet Deustche Welle post...
Category

2010s Abstract Abstract Paintings

Materials

Oil, Wood Panel

All, Always, Forever, Never and Only
By Adam Gunn
Located in Montreal, Quebec
“Metaphysics is a dark ocean without shores or lighthouse, strewn with many a philosophic wreck.” – Immanuel Kant A recent online story in the German news outlet Deustche Welle post...
Category

2010s Abstract Abstract Paintings

Materials

Oil, Wood Panel

In the Remote Parts
By Adam Gunn
Located in Montreal, Quebec
Messages in a Bottle Text by Cameron Skene “Metaphysics is a dark ocean without shores or lighthouse, strewn with many a philosophic wreck.” - Immanuel Kant A recent online story i...
Category

2010s Abstract Abstract Paintings

Materials

Oil, Wood Panel

A Place Where Nothing Ever Happens
By Adam Gunn
Located in Montreal, Quebec
Adam Gunn’s painting practice began with a desire to subvert the traditional still life genre, creating an absurd experience that would evoke a sense of uncertainty in the viewer. In...
Category

2010s Contemporary Figurative Paintings

Materials

Oil, Wood Panel

The Twisted Tongue Tied Truth
By Adam Gunn
Located in Montreal, Quebec
Messages in a Bottle Text by Cameron Skene “Metaphysics is a dark ocean without shores or lighthouse, strewn with many a philosophic wreck.” - Immanuel Kant A recent online story i...
Category

2010s Abstract Abstract Paintings

Materials

Oil, Wood Panel

Sometimes I Forget What I Am
By Adam Gunn
Located in Montreal, Quebec
I am primarily a painter of things and my practice has grown out of a process of subverting the genre of still life. For my most recent paintings I have been working in an improvisat...
Category

2010s Abstract Abstract Paintings

Materials

Mixed Media, Oil, Wood Panel

You May Also Like

Some Pieces of It All
By Aaron Collier
Located in New Orleans, LA
Octavia Art Gallery is pleased to present Aaron Collier: Of Rocks and Ruins. The “Everything You Need to Know” website that intends to prepare visitors for the breezy summit and sce...
Category

2010s Abstract Abstract Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Paint

Further to Surface
By Aaron Collier
Located in New Orleans, LA
Octavia Art Gallery is pleased to present Aaron Collier: Of Rocks and Ruins. The “Everything You Need to Know” website that intends to prepare visitors for the breezy summit and sce...
Category

2010s Abstract Abstract Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Paint

Seeking Terra Firma
By Aaron Collier
Located in New Orleans, LA
Aaron Collier’s abstract paintings are both suggestive and silent, exploring the possibility of paint to simultaneously reveal and conceal. Since 2017 he has been interested in paral...
Category

2010s Abstract Abstract Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Paint

Sublunary
By Aaron Collier
Located in New Orleans, LA
Aaron Collier’s abstract paintings are both suggestive and silent, exploring the possibility of paint to simultaneously reveal and conceal. Since 2017 he has been interested in paral...
Category

2010s Abstract Abstract Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Paint

Not Today But Tomorrow
By Aaron Collier
Located in New Orleans, LA
Octavia Art Gallery is pleased to present Aaron Collier: Of Rocks and Ruins. The “Everything You Need to Know” website that intends to prepare visitors for the breezy summit and sce...
Category

2010s Abstract Abstract Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Paint, Oil

How He Tries
By Aaron Collier
Located in New Orleans, LA
Octavia Art Gallery is pleased to present Aaron Collier: Of Rocks and Ruins. The “Everything You Need to Know” website that intends to prepare visitors for the breezy summit and sce...
Category

2010s Abstract Abstract Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Paint, Oil