Bruno Dunley

Nara Roesler New York is pleased to present Clouds, a solo exhibition by Brazilian artist Bruno Dunley. A central protagonist of Brazil’s young generation of painters, the artist hereby presents his second solo show in the city, showcasing a body of paintings and works on paper developed over the last two years.

Dunley’s current production continues to explore painting’s constitutive tensions, namely between image and structural thickness, matter and scheme, always determined by an emphatic use of color. Initiated during the pandemic, and thus produced in a more isolated environment, Clouds includes a series of paintings that appear to have internalized the artist’s surroundings at the time, suggesting bewildered and labyrinthine fields, and stressing an oneiric, subjective tone where color manifests in its excess, through undetermined spaces.

Beginning in 2020, the artist has furthered his experimentation with color, notably fueled by his undertaking of the brand Joules & Joules, which he founded alongside artist Rafael Carneiro. With stalling imports, the now-growing business began during Covid-19 as a result of scarce prime oil paint and offers Brazil’s first high-quality and accessible national product to artists throughout the country. The endeavor launched the artist into a meticulous and highly experimental relationship with pigments, which is reflected in Dunley’s recent production. Motivated by a search for luminosity in the use of oil itself, he proceeds through layers of paint, left to cover or scraped, unfolding a material narrative for his paintings.

Dunley’s works on paper are produced with chalk and charcoal, proposing a more succinct formal and chromatic repertoire. Many of the works on paper included in the exhibition engage with the idea of the cloud, with the artist repeatedly drawing its shape, not as a means of achieving compositional rigor but instead as a way of letting himself be guided by the investigative possibilities of draftmaking as a structural foundation for his paintings.

In Cloud, the shape is explored as an abstract occurrence rather than a figure. Works such as Yellow Cloud, The cloud, and The city, capture its form on the brink of the formless, featuring a presence that seems to float within uncertainty. Clouds have always been limit-figures against the backdrop of geometry and perspective, fragments of reality that challenge measurement and graphic control, and, as in Dunley’s recent work, potentially, symbolic forms for abstraction, conveying lightness and ludic oneirism.

The work of Bruno Dunley questions the specificity of painting, particularly in relation to representation and materiality. His paintings depart from carefully constructed compositions, which he gradually begins to correct, alter, and cover up, frequently revealing the lacunae in the apparent continuity of perception. Bruno Dunley is part of a new generation of Brazilian painters called 200e8 group. The collective, based in São Paulo, was founded with a common interest in painting, to enable its eight members to develop a critical approach to painting within the contemporary art scene. Dunley’s work begins with found images and with an analysis of the nature of painting, where language codes such as gesture, plane, surface, and representation are understood as an alphabet. Recently, his practice has shifted towards gestural abstraction, all while maintaining his interest for representation.

As stated by the artist ‘I see my work as a series of questions and affirmations about the possibilities of painting, about its essence and our expectations of it.’ Often, a single color predominates the surface of his compositions, establishing a minimalist language and a meditative quality, that is frequently addressed in critical texts about his work. More recently, the artist has shown an interest for more aggressive composition, expressed through vibrant and contrasting colors. The 200e8’s practices stipulate that stable or preconceived ideas about artistic processes should be abandoned, and procedures continually reformulated. In the work of Dunley, promises are made and consequently broken, testing the limits of the viewer’s tension.

Bruno Dunley was born in 1984 in Petropolis, Brazil. He lives and work in São Paulo. Recent solo shows and projects include: Virá, at Galeria Nara Roesler (2020), in São Paulo, Brazil; The Mirror, at Galeria Nara Roesler (2018), in New York, USA; Dilúvio, at SIM Galeria (2018), in Curitiba, Brazil; Ruído, at Galeria Nara Roesler (2015), in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; e, at Centro Universitário Maria Antonia (CEUMA) (2013), in São Paulo, Brazil. He participated in the 33th Bienal de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil (2018). Recent group shows include: Tinta sobre tinta: acervo do MAM no Instituto CPFL, at Galeria de Arte do Instituto CPFL (2019), in Campinas, Brazil; AI-5 50 ANOS – Ainda não terminou de acabar, at Instituto Tomie Ohtake (ITO) (2018), in São Paulo, Brazil; A luz que vela o corpo é a mesma que revela a tela, at Caixa Cultural (2017), in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Visões da arte no acervo do MAC USP 1900-2000, at Museu de Arte Contemporânea da Universidade de São Paulo (MAC- USP) (2016), in São Paulo, Brazil. His works are included in important institutional collections, such as: Instituto Itaú Cultural, São Paulo, Brazil; Museu de Arte Contemporânea da Universidade de São Paulo (MAC-USP), São Paulo, Brazil; Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo (MAM-SP), São Paulo, SP, Brazil, and Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil.