NEW YORK, NY.- Gasser Grunert presents the exhibition, Rodney Dickson: Paintings from June 4th to July 2nd. This keenly anticipated show will be Dickson's second with the gallery not including his installation as part of the Art Projects section of Art Basel Miami Beach 2007.
Rodney Dickson is a great force in painting. He is his own man and works without compromise, disregarding passing fashion or style. Often shocking, he challenges our aesthetic values beyond good taste, digging to explore the deeper impulses of our psychology. He draws together disparate ways of working, changing from realistic to abstract, using thick or thin paint and applying it with his hands when necessary, or a brush, pouring or spraying, constantly searching for the clearest expression. "Since my time as a student I have never considered good painting to be limited to one style. Instead we must use anything to drag a painting out of ourselves".
In all of his paintings there are layers of previous paintings, traces of imagery, mostly now obscured. The result of this ruthless practice of constantly creating and destroying is to put life and history into the work. Some of the imagery may in the end be unseen, and here the artist notes a parallel to how our individual personalities are formed by the accumulation of often unnoticed life events. He sees his work as an exploration of the human condition. His working practice is relentless, striving daily to paint better than before in the belief that each new painting will bring him closer to his goal.
Rodney Dickson was born in Northern Ireland in 1956 and as a teenager experienced the worst time of violent political strife in that country, a time known as ‘The Troubles’, when civil disorder brought that society close to collapse. His personal reaction was to develop a conscious respect for human life and an awareness of the need to search for a deeper understanding. Dickson’s work often addresses the politics of the time and in this exhibition he responds to the current chaotic state of the world, including the effects of terrorism and because of his recent project, the political situation in Burma .
Dickson is also known for his “HAPPENINGS” such as the much acclaimed Queen Bee, Snake Bar & Tea Room and his current internationally touring project Entertainment (Fucked Up). He feels that these broadly diverse works have come from his paintings and considers them to be avenues of research which ultimately lead back to painting.
