Carroll Dunham

stronger than paradise

interview by GLENN O’BRIEN
photography by ALEX ANTITCH

All artworks copyright Carroll Dunham and courtesy of Gladstone Gallery, New York and Brussels

Carroll Dunham, or Tip, as his friends call him, is a perfect painter. Do you know what I mean by that? Me, neither. But I’m pretty sure it’s true. He has a vision — a discrete, evolved, impeccably worked-out vision. It’s not exactly utopian, but it depicts a flawed Eden that is, perhaps, as good as it gets, in that it cannot be improved upon.

I have a little piece of paper with a tree on it, a species grown only by Tip, and when I look at it, I am transported, just as if I had taken a very good drug — one that makes you relaxed, bemused, mystified, and improved. That’s art at its best. It’s probably the one picture…