JESSICA DICKINSON 

Close/Close 

May 3 - June 7, 2015 

Opening reception: Sunday May 3, 6-8pm 

Book signing with the artist: Friday May 15, 10am-12pm 

“Time: a repetition on a surface: light, dark, open, close. The wall, a windowpane: illuminated then opaque then a half-light. Two lines of light, either side of the shade: delineating invisibility as the thing. A curtain, this way or that: the pushing back and forth of time on consciousness registered, silently, through the days. The repetition on a surface: something fleeting finds form, while something hard as stone changes.” 

 - Jessica Dickinson 

James Fuentes is pleased to present a solo exhibition of new paintings by Jessica Dickinson, Close/Close. The word “close”, depending on its context and pronunciation, can have different meanings - to shut something that is open, or to indicate proximity at once physical, spatial, and intimate. Dickinson structured this exhibition around the threshold of these meanings. Oscillating between calcified neutrality and subtle radiance, the works follow the sensations of an unfolding thought process examining an idea, emotion, or situation in its various conflicting dimensions over time. The layered actions and delineations of closed and closeness ossify into abstractions that attempt to decipher both unknowability, and moments of clarity. 

Dickinson’s abstract paintings are developed over a long period of time through repeated additive, and subtractive procedures with oil paint on a plaster-like surface. Events of marking, covering, scraping, cutting into, and revealing are compressed as the paintings unfold actions of chance, change, and intention over time. Debra Singer notes in her recent essay, “While figurative is hardly a word one would use to describe Dickinson’s paintings, the figure, or the body itself, is central to our understanding of it. Her complex abstract surfaces become mercurial objects, seeming to shift in time and space right before our eyes as they delicately recalibrate the equilibrium among our optical, tactile, and cognitive abilities. In this way, her work addresses the mysterious connections of materiality to vision and perception, while simultaneously offering up a series of propositions about how “painting” – as both an object and a medium – might be considered a time-based enterprise.”

Released in conjunction with the exhibition is the first publication featuring Dickinson’s work, Under / Press. / With-This / Hold- / Of-Also / Of/How / Of-More / Of: Know. Published by Inventory Press and designed by Project Projects, the fully-illustrated publication features an essay by the curator Debra Singer and an interview with the artist by Patricia Treib. 

Jessica Dickinson was born in St. Paul, Minnesota in 1975. She lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. Dickinson received her MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art, Michigan in 1999, and is currently a Critic for the MFA program at Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut. Dickinson joined James Fuentes in 2009, and had her first solo exhibition at the gallery the same year. Recent solo exhibitions have taken place at Altman Siegel, San Francisco (2013); David Petersen Gallery, Minneapolis (2013); and Maisterravalbuena, Madrid (2012). Selected group exhibitions have taken place at The Warehouse, Dallas; The Zabludowicz Collection, London; and The Kitchen, New York. Works by Dickinson are held in the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York and The Rachofsky Collection, Dallas.