Jessica Dickinson
BEFORE/BESIDE
October 26, 2011 – December 11, 2011
 
James Fuentes LLC is pleased to announce a solo exhibition of paintings by Jessica Dickinson, Before/Beside. 

Continuing her exploration of the breakdown of binary structures that partition inside from outside, subject from object, and suspension from closure, Dickinsonʼs new paintings and drawings further an unstable matrix of migratory light, color, and form. In works created over extended periods of time, additive and subtractive processes of layering, notching, scraping, and staining are put into play seeking a space at once material and invisible, physical and transitory.

The exhibition title Before/Beside refers to being on a threshold between two or more states, a sequence of events that overlap and fall into each other as they shift between concrete definitions. Standing before/beside each other, four paintings present a spectrum of events between darkness and light with degrees of chromatic intensities. Within these fields, a form resonates at different stages of opening or coming into vision, suggesting a barrier, window, shadow, illumination, obstacle, doorway, or screen that is being
delineated, breached or passed through. Ranging between the boldness of seeing sharply and the diminished haze of barely seeing, the paintings mark the transitions and exchanges between philosophical, perceptual, and psychological states of anticipation, desire, uncertainty, and release.

Along with the four paintings, Dickinson will exhibit for the first time a full set of remainders.  Since 2009, Dickinson has made large-scale graphite rubbings of each painting while in progress, producing an impression every time the surface has changed significantly. As sedimentary events, the remainders index forms within the paintings that have become invisible, partial, or erased. For Before/Beside Dickinson exhibits a sequence of remainders created of the painting Towards (2010)-, not included in the exhibition. Echoing the ghost of a painting not present but connected and a precedent to
those on view, the remainders shadow and assert material gravity and question the visible.

Dickinson was born in 1975, St. Paul, Minnesota, and lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. She received her BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 1997 and her MFA from the Cranbrook Academy of Art in 1999. She has presented solo exhibitions at; the Frieze Art Fair, Frame (2010), James Fuentes LLC, New York (2009), Brooklyn Fire Proof project space (2007), Bas Fisher Invitational Miami (2006) and has a forthcoming exhibition at Maisterra Valbuena Galería in Madrid, in 2012. Dickinson has also recently participated in group exhibitions at; Mihai Nicodim Gallery, Los Angeles, RISD Museum of
Art, Providence, Sikkema Jenkins & Co, New York & Lehman Maupin Gallery, New York.  
 
For further information please feel free to contact Adrianne or James at
info@jamefuentes.com