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The Generations

Bob's Gallery, Brooklyn, NY

July 12 - August 18, 2024

The Generations is a site responsive installation of paintings by Jan Dickey that sit on the floor and slump against the walls of Bob’s Gallery. Each painting consists of more than one panel connected by hinges, giving them a thin, vertical—possibly personified—shape. The hinging causes slight bends where each panel meets, suggesting a curved spinal anatomy.

 

The Generations is meant to be seen as a family of artworks, sharing a genetic code of light and material, grouped together in moments of relaxation. The manner in which the works are installed in this empty room of Bob’s Brooklyn apartment is intended to prioritize the comfort of these artworks at rest over the viewing convenience of human audiences. They have just come to the end of a rigorous and dynamic process of creation in Jan’s studio, and they are now on break.

 

The show title operates semantically in three major ways: 1. It associates these paintings of various sizes as being under a family surname consisting of young and old generations; 2. It functions as a conversation starter for considering paintings as living material objects that are to be cared for and passed along through human generations; 3. And finally, it alludes to the process by which the works were layered with paint.

 

All the shapes we see on these paintings are a result of light shapes Jan traced as sunlight came through his studio windows and landed on the works, evershifting with the seasons. All the paintings’ surface qualities and color relationships were generated through the complex mixtures and layers of various paints he applied within the boundaries of those traced shapes. Jan uses animal glues, egg tempera, casein, acrylic, various homemade dyes, and oil to layer color in ways that result in unexpected surface reactions, resulting in luminosity, depth, and surprising tactile qualities. Jan has brought further suggestions of his studio’s light shapes into the gallery space itself by using two shades of white house paint in his preparation of the walls. 

 

Uncertainty and collaboration with the nonhuman world are central to Jan’s art practice and his general philosophy of life. He is intent on producing painted objects that have our permission to change gradually with time, the way all living things do. The cracks we see in these freshly painted works lay a welcoming groundwork for gradual change and development over the centuries. Jan is most interested in how humans can enter into a reciprocal relationship with the objects we cherish as we pass through time together.

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