KENNY DUNKAN
Affinities Are Miracles
May 8 - June 19, 2021
Postmasters is delighted to present the first US solo exhibition of Paris-based artist Kenny Dunkan. His work was
previously shown at PostmastersROMA.
Titled Affinities are Miracles, the exhibition fills the entire gallery space, and includes works in multiple media,
including sculpture, photographs, video, performance, and installation. As they explore the complexities of identity
theory, Dunkan's works exude both a daring intimacy and an inter-national perspective. Affinities are Miracles is not
a painful or tragic show. On the contrary, its depth is playful and looks to a hopeful future of inclusion of consciousness
and acceptance of the self and others.
Dunkan's practice is greatly influenced by his upbringing in Guadeloupe and its multiform Caribbean culture, which
itself synthesizes a melange of influences from African history and colonialism. Dunkan also engages deeply with the
constructs of identity in multiple contexts as formulated by the philosopher Édouard Glissant (1928-2011).
Affinities are Miracles is poetically saturated with the intricacies of Glissant's Poetics of Relation, particularly the subtle
yet powerful idea that what we ignore or are unaware of in the context of morality or politics continues to affect both
ourselves and others beyond the present.
The ideas of nature and culture, history and present, ritual and heritage, oppression and resistance, violence and
protection, intimacy and vulnerability, the sacred, the mystical, and the mundane, are all seamlessly folded into
Dunkan's art. Juggling assimilation and otherness, his view and treatment of identity is not a simplistic or linear one,
but rather a complex accumulation of ideologies, cultures, and collective and personal experiences.
There is an allure with which Kenny Dunkan both embraces and opposes the premeditated ideological dogma of the
'West', while standing on his own acknowledged subjectivities. In his works, images of his naked body are not shocking
or controversial but serve as a map, an index of his own experience of knowledge transfer and historical transmission.
Dunkan's work also gets intimately personal in its evocation of the politicization of the Black body. His Transfers series,
for example, literally offers up the melanin from his skin captured on the surface of towels and washcloths. As a young
child, Dunkan recalls, the quotidian gesture of drying off with a towel was an epiphanic moment that led him to question
the validity and beauty of his own skin. With procedural allusions ranging from Yves Klein's nude manipulations to David
Hammons' body prints, Dunkan's Transfers are a tender exercise in acceptance of self, agency, and his own corporeal
factuality.
The body is integral to all Dunkan's artworks. Photographs depict his hair, his hands, or his whole body wedged between
two elements of a modernist sectional sofa. His billboard-scale PVC prints are diptychs in which an image, often a bodily
closeup, is paired with an absurdist poem constructed from promotional texts for Black hair care products.
The videos each explore a different movement of a body part in various contexts or rituals, and trace the artist's
connections between body, spirit, and place. These can be simple and isolated, such as squishing, peeling and
deseeding of the granadilla fruit (POM SOUSSÉ, 2019); shaking his glittered bottom (COSMOS, 2021); or flaring his
nostrils (NOU KA VÉYÉW, 2020). Or they can be more expansive and complex like performing a dance inspired by his
Caribbean heritage under the Eiffel Tower (UDRIVINMECRAZ, 2014).
With the human scale sculptures MAS-A-PWOTEKSYON (2018) and DUAL CONDITIONING SYSTEM.
LOTTA BODY SET AND TWIST (2018) Dunkan introduces Christian religious iconography of gisants, the carved
effigies adorning the tombs of important historical figures. Part fallen sci-fi astronauts and part religious relics,
these sculptures depict armored figures laid to rest for the afterlife. The protectionism of the armor juxtaposed
with the vulnerability of their recumbent position at once embodies and challenges the stereotypes of the Black body.
Kenny Dunkan was born in 1989 in Guadeloupe. He graduated from the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Appliqués
et des Métiers d'Art (ENSAAMA Olivier de Serres) and la École Nationale des Arts Décoratifs in Paris. He won the ADAGP
prize for Plastic Arts at the 2015 Salon de Montrouge. From 2016 to 2017, Kenny Dunkan was a resident of Villa Médicis,
Académie de France in Rome.
 |
Kenny Dunkan MAS-A-PWOTEKSYON 2018 chainmail with burnished metal nuts and nylon cable ties, leather personal shoes, PMMA, Queen Helene Cocoa Butter, LED 86.5 x 47.25 x 23.5 inches |
 |
Kenny Dunkan installation view |
 |
Kenny Dunkan installation view |
 |
Kenny Dunkan NECK CROWN, SOMETIMES LASCIVIOUSLY TOUCHING MY SKIN TO CONJURE ALL THE COUNIA MANMAN'W 2020 perforated euro crown necklace, nylon and brass 13.75 x 10 inches |
 |
Kenny Dunkan Fwét 2021 perforated euro crown necklace, nylon and brass 13.75 x 10 inches |
 |
Kenny Dunkan Damaged system 2021 chainmail of burnished and brass nuts and nylon 39.4 x 11.8 x 3.1 inches |
 |
Kenny Dunkan Disconnected Hood 2021 chainmail of metal nuts and nylon collars, bells, PVC 29.5 x 13.5 x 12.5 inches |
 |
Kenny Dunkan installation view |
 |
Kenny Dunkan installation view |
 |
Kenny Dunkan DUAL CONDITIONING SYSTEM. LOTTA BODY SET AND TWIST 2018 Laser engraved and cut PMMA, nylon hose clamps, Queen Helene Cocoa Butter, natural hair and LED 86.5 x 47.25 x 23.5 inches |
 |
Kenny Dunkan installation view |
 |
Kenny Dunkan installation view |
 |
Kenny Dunkan installation view |
 |
Kenny Dunkan UDRIVINMECRAZ 2014 single channel video, color + sound running time: 8:34 minutes |
 |
Kenny Dunkan THE FORBIDDEN FRUIT #2 2020 digital photo under glossy acrylic glass 43.2 x 59 x 2 inches |
 |
Kenny Dunkan DUAL CONDITIONING SYSTEM. LOTTA BODY SET AND TWIST 2018 laser engraved and cut PMMA, nylon hose clamps, after-shampooing, natural hair and LED 86.5 x 47.25 x 23.5 inches |
 |
Kenny Dunkan AFFINITIES ARE MIRACLES 2019 digital photo print under glossy acrylic glass 43.2 x 59 x 2 inches |
 |
Kenny Dunkan « ♥« 2020 digital photo print under glossy acrylic glass 43.2 x 59 x 2 inches |
 |
Kenny Dunkan Deep Down Intense Penetrating Conditioner 2021 print on industrial tarpaulin (PCV), grommets 118 x 157 inches |
 |
Kenny Dunkan TRANSPLANTATION 2021 single channel video, color + sound running time: 2:11 minutes |