Jane Dickson (b. 1952, Chicago, Illinois) makes paintings and drawings that explore the psychogeography of American culture. Her practice was forged in the crucible of New York’s late-seventies counterculture, where she participated in artist collectives like Fashion Moda, Collaborative Projects Inc., and Group Material. Working figuratively from her own photographic snapshots, particularly those of Times Square, where she lived for nearly thirty years, Dickson portrays strip clubs, diners, motels, sex workers, and their seemingly straight-laced foils: suburban homes, driveways, and businessmen. Using oils and acrylic on canvas and linen alongside atypical surfaces such as vinyl, felt, astroturf, and sandpaper, she achieves impressionistic textures that often blur her subjects in hazes of neon and darkness. Her compositions bring the tradition of social realist painting into collision with postmodern feminist cultural critique, yielding paintings that are at once representational and conceptual. Dickson lives in New York.
In 1980, as a member of Collaborative Projects Inc., Dickson helped organize and exhibited in the landmark exhibitions The Times Square Show and The Real Estate Show. Her work has recently been presented at Karma (Los Angeles, 2024; New York, 2023); the Museum of the City of New York (2023); Alison Jacques, London (2023); UCCA Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing (2022); James Fuentes Gallery, New York (2022, 2019); Stems Gallery, Belgium (2021, 2020); Howl! Happening, New York (2020); and the Seoul Museum of Art (2019). She was included in the 2022 Whitney Biennial. Dickson’s work is represented in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago; Bronx Museum, New York; Brooklyn Museum, New York; Jewish Museum, New York; Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Minneapolis Institute of Art; Museum of Modern Art, New York; National Portrait Gallery, Washington, D.C.; Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Victoria and Albert Museum, London; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.
Jane is represented by Karma Gallery.