720’ 10”

Artist Reception - 25 January 2024 • 4:00 PM - 7:00 PM 4:00 PM - 5:00 PM UM Staff Hour

Please join us for a reception in the Building 18 Lobby to celebrate Peter B. Dunn - 720' 10'' & the Stamps School of Art and Design Staff Exhibitions.

Peter Dunn has historically been an object maker as a designer and sculptor. Whether designing furniture or developing the ideas for sculpture, the process has always been the same. Ideas begin as scribbled images that are then stretched and refined with CAD software.  Dunn desires to build the object within the software to really see how its parts and details work within an empty, yet 3-dimensional space. Furniture, sculpture, and objects are then built with the parts that have been planned and dimensions specified within the software.

This body of work is rooted in the shutdown of shops and studios during the pandemic and the inability to receive materials for large sculpture and furniture fabrication. With an innate desire to continue exploring the ideas he had, Dunn resolved to work in a 2-Dimensional format. using the scribble, sketch, to software to construct and invent, 3-dimensional still life within infinite space. From there, he translated the digital images back into graphite drawings, reiterating the lines over and over while allowing for altercations and moments of excitement over the presence of the line or a shadow.

At its core, much of the work studies the manipulation of simple geometry.  Dunn looks at the form from different forced perspectives – exploding, augmenting, slicing, repeating, and lighting.  This body of work is a study of perception, sympathy, hierarchy, and reality. The “We Are Virus” series is an adaptation from an initial design where it continued to evolve and adapt through manipulation of parts and scale.

Peter Dunn is not interested in the psychology of discourse centered around play and learning, but he does believe and embrace that we take incomplete information and allow ourselves to interpret details that fill spaces (law of Prägnanz).

Peter Dunn received his BFA from Wayne State University and MFA from University of Michigan.  He currently serves on faculty at College for Creative Studies.