Jessica Dickinson

Under

Nov.17, 2012 - Jan.26, 2013

Maisterravalbuena

Madrid, Spain 

http://www.maisterravalbuena.com/

 

MAISTERRAVALBUENA is pleased to anounce the first solo exhibition in Spain by American artist Jessica Dickinson.

Titled Under, this exhibition inhabits the almost-invisibility of being under shadow, engaging passages of time when light is withdrawing or just starting to appear. The largely abstract pieces shift through observation, holding no fixed viewpoint, approaching darkness as fertile ground and necessary for understanding that which it contrasts. The works oscillate between hazy atmosphere and a stone-like materiality, suggestive of walls, veils, openings, and barriers. On closer inspection, cuts and indentations mark the attempted breach of surface that both reflects and absorbs light, and navigate resistant fields, creating delineation. Similar to the experience of seeing in the dark as eyes adjust and hands feel the way, locating form that is never fully revealed, these traces reflect the perceptual, philosophical, and psychological weight in the periphery of everyday life.

Dickinson’s paintings are layered over an extended period of time through repeated additive and subtractive procedures with oil on a plaster like surface. Events of marking, scraping, covering, cutting into and revealing are compressed as the paintings unfold actions of chance, change, and intention over time. Gradually materializing over the last year, the three paintings structure the exhibition with three levels of visibility: from the opacity of Under, through the emerging form of Press., to the subtle illumination of With-This. 

The mixed media works on paper extend from these paintings, and offer more contrast through their differing material processes. These works are created slowly, almost blindly, while absorbing time, pressure, and marks formed beneath and between the everyday activities of making the paintings, further foregrounding what was once peripheral.

 

Dickinson was born in St.Paul, MN in 1975 and lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. She has presented solo exhibitions at James Fuentes in New York (2011, 2009), the Frieze Art Fair, Frame (2010), Brooklyn Fire Proof project space (2007), and Bas Fisher Invitational Miami (2006). She has a forthcoming exhibition at Altman Siegel Gallery in San Francisco in 2013. Recent group exhibitions include Sikkema Jenkins & Co., Lehman Maupin, and Besides, With, Against, and Yet: Abstraction and the Ready-made Gesture at The Kitchen in New York, among others.