1158 Howard StreetSan Francisco, CA 94103Google Map »
Opening: Saturday, September 7, 2013 from 7-10PM
Exhibition run: September 7 - 21, 2013.
Gallery Hours: TH-SA 1-6PM or by appointment
Parameters is an exhibition of new works created by Melissa Dickenson during her time as Alter Space’s Jail Cell artist-in-residence from February through May 2013. Dickenson will be exhibiting a series of paintings made with an unique and unconventional process that includes the stretching of thin, delicate sheets of painted plastic around stretcher bars. Her surfaces are mysterious, redefining traditional painting through the utilization of a common painter’s tool, the plastic drop cloth. She manipulates the plastic drop cloth with movement, gestural markings, and pigments to yield sublime abstractions, which offer a sense of light, depth, and fragility. In her painting “Cell”, Dickenson excavates a layer of the studio’s cement floor and embeds it in-between plastic and paint, adding grit to an otherwise ethereal body of works.
While Dickenson was artist-in-residence, she explored the similarities between the characteristics of her artistic practice and how they relate to those of a jail cell. She believes that the feelings of confinement evoked while working in a small, restrictive space are “akin to the gray place of self chosen isolation that is required in many art practices.” Dickenson followed a path of repetition to achieve a form of meditative plateau, similar to that sought by individuals who endure extended periods of incarceration and isolation. The feeling of being trapped on a physical level prompted Dickenson’s explorations in variations of fear, memory, dreams, and fantasy.
Melissa Dickenson received her BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore in 2002 and an MFA from California College of the Arts in San Francisco 2012. While at CCA, she was a recipient of a Barclay Simpson Award and a finalist for the Toby Lewis Award. Dickenson’s work is has been exhibited internationally in Spain, Poland and Japan and is part of the permanent collection of the Embassy of Sudan in Khartoum. Nationally her works have been on display on both coasts in many major cities including Boston, Philadelphia, New York, Baltimore, Washington D.C., Atlanta, Dallas, Los Angeles, and San Francisco.
