Gavin Bunner – “It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World”

Gavin Bunner – “It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World”
February 28 – March 28, 2009
Reception: Saturday, February 28, 6pm – 9pm

Tinlark Gallery
Crossroads of the World - 6671 Sunset Blvd., #1512, Hollywood, CA 90028
Hours - by appointment
Contact: Cris McCall - 323.463.0039
info@tinlark.com / www.tinlark.com

Opening February 28, 2009 Tinlark Gallery gleefully presents Gavin Bunner, “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World” in its gallery’s main space.

Taking its title from the 1963 movie about a madcap race to locate an elusive cash sum, Bunner’s ink and gouache on paper paintings offer the same cameo-laced wackiness of the film through the artist’s staging of idiosyncratically linked icons and found imagery garnered from free-associative romps on Google. Inhabiting fictitious locales, with a dash of psychedelia and a pinch of pop surrealism Bunner’s non sequitur narratives are whimsical and engaging, rendered with a competency that brings to mind a love child of Terry Gilliam and Marcel Dzama.

Gavin’s scenes revolve around a simple theme – a factory, bowling alley, hiking in L.A. – typed into a Google search that leads the artist on his own zany accrual adventure. The resulting of imagery feels as if it were culled from recollections of scholastic reading lists, dog-eared Encyclopedia Britannicas, 1970’s TV Guides and Wickepedia. The final product offers amusing expressions of Americana, never trite and free of judgment and derision - the Mad Mad world just is. Bunner’s compositional choreography provides a fun visual pathway so we feel like hitchhikers on his Google image trip.

Having left behind his days working at the Photo Center at Walmart in Canton, Illinois, Gavin’s own mad mad world is now the City of Angels. He holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Painting and Drawing from Illinois State University, and his work has been published in Whitehot Magazine of Contemporary Art, Issue 1 and New American Paintings, Issue 65. Gavin rides his bike a lot and spends his days reading art theory at the Downtown Los Angels Library. This is his second solo show with Tinlark.

Image info: “Laundromat”, 2008, Gouache on paper, image size 11 ½ x 28”