Jessica Dickinson: final remainders 2011-2013
May 18 – June 22, 2013
OPENING RECEPTION May 25, 7-9pm
 
David Petersen Gallery is pleased to announce a solo exhibition by Jessica Dickinson.  The exhibition is the first time Dickinson will present a grouping of final remainders, large graphite rubbings made from the surfaces of her completed paintings. This exhibition brings together six final remainders made from paintings finished between 2011 and 2013.
 
Remainder by definition is “that which is left over / the portion of which remains when part has been taken away / the number remaining after subtraction and division / the part which is left over after the ravages of time, weather, or destruction / remaining part or trace”. 
 
Dickinson’s largely abstract paintings, absent from the exhibition, are created over an extended period of time through repeated additive and subtractive procedures with oil on a plaster-like surface. Each painting is developed slowly through stages of meditative procedures, abrupt change, and chance operations, some which are visible in the final painting and some that are absorbed into the surface, present in the material yet not fully perceptible. The final painting is an aggregated yet atmospheric surface that opens a gradually revealing field for both visual and material intensities, echoing the intense shifts in which we "see", both inwardly and outwardly, through an encounter with slowness, the physical, and the temporal.
 
The final remainders of these works extend this process through making a manual index of the painting. Color, luminosity, and paint are cancelled out to reveal articulations that open up and delineate the overall field of graphite. Subtle differentiations emerge through slight notches, repetitive markings, linear and structural attempts of demarcation, and clear breaching of the surface. By bringing these final remainders together in one room, almost like ghosts, a quiet drama makes itself visible through these emerging contrasts and variables. In his 2009 text on the remainders, artist Matt Keegan wrote “[n]either digital scans nor photographic details, the remainders are impressions made by Jessica putting her body and weight on the panels and embossing the relief of each piece as an object.”1 Here “reproducing” the artwork is not capturing an image, but rather it’s haptic topography. 
 

This quasi-representation of the painting does not impart the clarity of a detailed picture, but renders a material fact. Through connecting vision to the trace of mark making and the body, what the remainders offer is a stark yet subtle translation of what it may feel like to see, or to see what is felt, and is touched. The resulting tactility is visual, evoking the experience of moving through space by feeling and touching the periphery to guide you. Standing as shadows and echoes of paintings, the final remainders present thin veils of materiality - an after effect, after image, or memory – questioning the visible and our processes of understanding it.
 
Supplemental to this exhibition and available to view upon request will be Dickinson’s remainder books. These lo fi self-published artist books chronicle the larger project of the remainder sets that are made for each painting, where a rubbing is made each time the surface of the painting changes significantly. 

 For more information or high-resolution imagery, please contact Kelly Filreis at Kelly@davidpetersengallery.com
 
 
David Petersen Gallery
2018 Lyndale Ave. S. 
Minneapolis, MN 55405
    
1   
  from “We’re not there”, remainder book for Here, 2009, James Fuentes LLC, New York, Monday Dinner Publications