The 1980s brought societal change and pace, the previous idyllic ideas and dreams started to break apart. The experiment of communal living and using the house as a gallery space in a very small community had not sustained its success. Opportunities, exhibitions and sales were less and less forthcoming.
There was also a shift in the current art and culture. While there were a few artists who inspired him still, he found it harder and harder to identify with the times. Gunner’s style of work no longer seemed relevant in contemporary contexts. During these years he experimented with material and subjects, none of which became permanent styles for him – many works remained studies or drawings. Subject wise he embraced themes of erotica and the natural world which, though running deeper than the popular culture’s fascinations, nonetheless was strongly coloured by the mode of the time. Which now in retrospect, can seem a little outdated and problematic.
One dedicated style he does develop in this period, is working with fixing interferens. These are developments from his early water bath paintings, but instead of patterns of solid colours, they are dependent on interaction of light to see the spectra of colours, he explains the idea himself:
“The light colours optical reflections, colours freed from graphic drama. Rainbow joy, new basis for solar reflex. Angles from the room to the eye, from the inside out, all colours in one – beautiful as the light, the colours of the light fixed. The burning point between sun and soul.”
The work, though may have merit, is problematic in its structure. It is both difficult to make, difficult to maintain (hence why very few examples remain) and most importantly, very difficult to exhibit and see. Gunner does exhibit this work in Copenhagen in 1988, in a self funded exhibition space called Mitzi Galleri, but is deeply hurt by people’s lack of enthusiasm for the process. This caused a significant conflict and dissatisfaction, from which, as a consequence he stops trying to exhibit his work.
Where he had, for a period, already been fairly withdrawn he seemed to isolate himself more from then on.