Rose Dickson Night Vision — Adams and Ollman

Rose Dickson: Night Vision
April 2–May 7, 2022

Rose Dickson uses shape and pattern to understand relationships of touch, unity, boundaries, overlap, tension, and violence. Employing a system of archetypal forms throughout her work, Dickson is engaged in a speculative alchemy using a range of media including paint, cast metal, wax, and ceramic that explore the qualities inherent in each form and the essential, transformative relationships they create when brought together. Night Vision, Dickson’s exhibition at Adams and Ollman and organized with Melanie Flood Projects, will include new two and three dimensional works.

Dickson’s work focuses on process to reveal a proto-language of emotional connectedness. Her abstract forms, simultaneously archetypal and futurist, share characteristics with the body, tools and ornament. In a series of new paintings, Dickson reveals parts of a hidden or forgotten order. Starting with flashe on panel that is then covered in a thick layer of beeswax to obscure the pattern or image, Dickson slowly carves into the surface, rediscovering parts of the original painting. In a near archaeology-like process, Dickson both reveals information and creates mysteries, alternately exposing and obscuring imagery and narratives in a process of discovery. Also on view will be a series of cast aluminum sculptures that begin as subconscious finger drawings or tracings in sand. The resulting forms are reminiscent of ant tunnels, fossils, text, or spells. Similarly, images on glass set in irregular ceramic frames are coaxed into being through a process of drawing and redrawing using silver nitrate. Reflecting back onto us are partial, ghostly spirit reflections that feel as if they are in flux—simultaneously appearing or disappearing.

Rose Dickson (b. 1989, Portland, OR; lives and works in Chicago, IL) received her BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2012 and MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2021. Dickson lives and works in Chicago, Illinois. Dickson has been an artist in residence at MacDowell in Peterborough, NH; Ragdale Foundation in Lake Forest, IL; and Organhaus Art Space in Chongqing, China

Works

Rose Dickson
Love Spell, 2022
gouache, flashe and beeswax on wood
20 1/2h x 16 1/2w x 1 1/2d in
52.07h x 41.91w x 3.81d cm
RDickson001

Rose Dickson
Holly, 2022
gouache, flashe and beeswax on wood
37h x 25w x 2d in
93.98h x 63.50w x 5.08d cm
RDickson002

Rose Dickson
Lip Reader, 2022
gouache, flashe and beeswax on wood
36 1/2h x 24 1/2w x 2d in
92.71h x 62.23w x 5.08d cm
RDickson004

Rose Dickson
Night Vision, 2022
silver, glass, glazed terracotta
10 1/2h x 16 1/2w x 1d in
26.67h x 41.91w x 2.54d cm
RDickson008

Rose Dickson
To Look at the Moon and Know that it Burns, 2022
silver, glass, glazed terracotta
10 1/2h x 16 1/2w x 1d in
26.67h x 41.91w x 2.54d cm
RDickson012