JANE DICKSON
New York legend Jane Dickson has been exhibiting her nocturnal paintings of peep shows and porn parlors internationally for two decades. Her work was pivotal in defining the city’s downtown cultural scene in the 1980s. Working frequently with unusual surfaces such as Astroturf, sandpaper, vinyl, or carpet, Dickson exploits the implicit references and the textural possibilities that these materials offer.
ABOUT THE WORK:
Jane Dickson’s flickering neon lights lick at the darkness of the seediest Times Square in New York City in the 1980s and 90s. The shine of peep shows and live dancing girls illuminate the night sky. Painting on asphalt and other textured materials, Dickson’s images have a roughness akin to that of sandpaper, a manually-made pixilation predating the internet. The work pulses with hyper-sexualization and exhibitionism of the human body, but at a clear removal from the ‘live show”—an aestheticizing of sex that sells, the foreshadowing of the future of OnlyFans subscriptions.
Peep 2, 1992-1996. Image courtesy of the artist.