Dennis Gun

FROM THE BOOK

"To prepare his large-format photographic works, Gun arranges objects of diverse provenance and then photographs them against a dark background. Each object represents a certain style, an attitude, and a particular period of time or symbolizes affiliation with a religious community. At the same time, the objects he groups together suggest moods, subliminally evoking the impression of violence, criminality, and terror: for example, an old-fashioned pistol is lying on a table with a small, ornately embroidered handbag and a yellow sweet wrapped in plastic--an individual, erotic, sensual metaphor found in many of Gun's other works. In another image, this pistol appears to be casually placed next to a valuable wineglass. The enigmatic quality of these encounters between objects is accentuated by the extreme distribution of light, high-lighting details of the objects or underlining their transparency, creating intense shadows that rigorously set the lit sections of the image off from the background, and let the unimportant elements slide into the darkness."

Jürgen Schilling, excerpted from Staging and Coincidence in Dennis Gun.