THE WORLD IS A TEEMING BUT NOT QUITE RECOGNIZABLE GARDEN in the paintings of Brian Michael Dunn and E.E. Ikeler, who are exhibiting together in "Second Spring." The styles of the two artists are disparate yet compatible, to judge from their duo show at Pazo Fine Art's D.C. location. Both participants devise elaborate all-over pictures packed with janglingly competing motifs, cohesively composed if never symmetrical.
Dunn's eight paintings, made with vinyl acrylic, are dense and vivid, even when restricted to just two colors. The Takoma Park artist constructs crowded fields in large part from such elementary forms as dots, stars, triangles, and teardrops, which overlap intricately and unpredictably. A few canvases have dominating features, such as the web in "Spider and I," and many include bloom-like shapes that make such pictures as "Rust Belt" strongly suggestive of flower beds. Yet these are not paintings of actual things. Dunn abstracts real objects into pictorial devices that exist, and could only exist, within a painting.
Photographs of flowers are among the elements incorporated into Ikeler's pictures, which are more literally collaged than Dunn's. Absent in these mixed-media works is the headline-like text that was integral to some of the paintings in the Brooklynite's 2021 Hemphill Artworks show. But chunks of old English poetry are affixed to "Tis Folly to be Wise," the only one of the six paintings not held together by blue or a black background. And other pieces include stitched thread and button-like discs, some of them embellished with more flower photos. Unlike Dunn, Ikeler doesn't just simulate depth, but actually builds up layers of lines, circles, and images. Yet the effect of both artists's strategies are similar: to lead the eye into mini-universes that appear profuse and bottomless.
