Michael Gunn often works between various drawing, painting, printmaking, and sculpture methods simultaneously. His image making practice remains in a constant state of transition, not unlike his subjects. His pieces depict cloudy and ambiguous narratives that partially reveal and pay tribute to sites of intimacy—both poetic and material—that queer people seek out to self-define and self-actualize. His emerging and entangled subjects experience intimacy as both hallucinatory contemplation and distanced recollection, using these modes as forms of protection and self-preservation. Each piece is built from a collection of studio fragments used as reference—cyanotype plant negatives, figurative studies, stream-of-consciousness drawings, flower bouquets, found photographs, foraged material fragments, appropriated color palettes, or whatever else finds its way into the windowsills and corners of the studio. The emphasis on illusion of simultaneous material states highlights poetic and coded forms of communication and voyeurism that emerge through the collapse, collection, arrangement, display, and personification of the natural environment, ephemeral partnerships, and the nonliving.

Michael Gunn is a Providence-based artist and educator originally from rural northwestern Pennsylvania. He works at ODD-KIN as a Gallery Manager, at School One as an Adjunct Art Teacher, and at the Rhode Island School of Design as a Coordinator in the Architecture and Design Division Office.