Beau Dunn is a Los Angeles based interdisciplinary artist that explores consumerism, materialism, globalized identities, and gender roles through conceptually charged mixed-media works that span across sculpture, painting, and photography. While formally diverse, most of Dunn’s works borrow imagery from iconic and sometimes controversial products known internationally to create lively-colored works that make a playful yet honest social commentary on the subtexts and influence of consumer culture as seen through the eyes of an insider. In Dunn’s multifaceted practice, Barbie Dolls, Hello Kitty, board games, Trojan Condom packages, and vibrant neon signs showcasing witty phrases lend visible the stereotypes and agendas that lie beneath them thus uncovering the “simulacrum” of contemporary society.

Dunn, who studied Fine Art at Pepperdine University, in California, became an artist to question the consumption of visual messaging across beauty, fashion, and advertising industries all of which she has first-hand knowledge of through her multifaceted background. Following this intention, for over a decade, Beau has built a cohesive body of work that she produces in series which explore variations of a far-reaching theme that she revisits over time relying upon traditional mediums, found materials, and innovative mechanic production processes.

Over the years, a good portion of Dunn’s versatile oeuvre has addressed gender stereotypes through her creative interpretation of varied products, such as toys and contraceptives, which, while disparate in nature, are associated with masculinity and femininity. Such is the case of Barbie, which since 2010 Dunn has incorporated in diverse projects ranging from furniture pieces and sculptural arrangements composed of Barbie and Ken body parts to her more recent series of close-up photographs of vintage and present-day barbies which touch on representation, female Western beauty standards, and diversity. Quite on the opposite end of what Barbie’s iconography symbolizes, Dunn’s lively-colored plastic sculptures of oversized Trojan condom packages, which she altered with ironic phrases, bring forth the more silent pressures men face, in this case, through their sexual stamina and performance. While pointing out the biases, expectations, and frequently unattainable aspirations these objects embody, rather than making judgments, Dunn leaves it to the viewer to make its own conclusions.

Further revealing the conceptual vein of her work, next to using products and creative representations of them, Dunn also relies on the power of words to explore the themes that inform her practice. The latter is seen in Next Generation, an ongoing series of vibrant neon works that portray witty variations of the phrase “Need money for...” as a means of reflecting how we monetize every aspect of our lives, from our appearance to our emotions and ideals. Next to this, the series evidences the impermanent nature of the concept of luxury as, for example, during the pandemic instead of “Need Money for a Birkin” one of her signs read “Need Money for Toilet Paper.”

Without a doubt, Dunn’s practice resists all labels and is nested in her unique understanding of the codes that lie beneath the beauty, fashion, and entertainment industries. While her work touches on pressing issues, it does so through the artist’s distinctive dark sense of humor that allow her to make tongue-in-cheek comments about her surroundings but also about herself.  

Beau Dunn (b. 1987, Los Angeles, CA) holds a BFA in sculpture from Pepperdine University. Her work is kept in important private art collections and has been exhibited both domestically and abroad in London, in the UK; and Gstaad, in Switzerland.