Rose Dickson: Slow Mask

August 26-October 2, 2016

Friday August 26, 6-9pm: Artist Reception
Tuesday September 20, 7pm: Poetry Reading with Timmy Straw, Erin Perry, Michele Glazer, and Ryan Mills 
Sunday October 2, 11am-1pm: Closing Reception

Gallery Hours: Saturday, 12-5 and by private appointment

Melanie Flood Projects is pleased to present Slow Mask, an exhibition by artist Rose Dickson, exploring the masking effect of gradual change and the undefined boundaries within transformation. Dickson’s work rests in a space between digital and analog; her photography, sculpture, video, bookmaking, and performance draw tensions between an art historical foundation and new media’s influence on making. In addition to this exhibition, Melanie Flood Projects will host a night of poetry and Dickson will present a one-night, site-specific, outdoor performance, further details to be announced. 

Beginning with stone, a material which holds great historical relevance in early expressions of making, Dickson photographs rock surfaces. She then works with and re-photographs the prints in her studio. Rather than manipulating the images post-capture, Dickson concerns herself with the physical process of manipulating by hand and utilizing the camera’s natural tendency to distort reality. She intentionally lights the sculpted print to apply both weight and form to its otherwise flat surface. In this series, Ruins, the photographs move between 2D and 3D, digital and analog, again and again. The line between fragment and whole becomes loose, and the boundaries between one form and another get lost in the slow narrative of simultaneous buildup and decomposition. The resulting images, which feel more like drawings or artifacts, are, like Yourcenar says of Greek statues, “so thoroughly shattered that out of the debris a new work of art is born.” By working and reprinting these photographs multiple times, a curious ruin is left, much like the natural habit of stone. 

Central to Dickson’s artistic practice is an obsession with layers and boundaries. In Nothing Between Us, the barriers between artist and viewer are made physical while the possibilities of performance, object, and video are condensed. The many layers in this piece represent a synchronized process of revealing and concealing. As the layers are dissolved, the artist is revealed and the object in the video is destroyed. 

As an interdisciplinary artist, Dickson engages in the conversation surrounding digital memory and its relationship to physical material by examining concepts of fragility and permanence. Slow Mask brings together works that explore the process of transformation and question defined boundaries between what was and is. 

Slow Mask is the fourth in an ongoing artist series at Melanie Flood Projects, Thinking through Photography, an exploration of artists working with photography today. The series includes a comprehensive survey of contemporary photographic practices through programming that highlights experimental and diverse approaches to image making. Facilitated by exhibitions, artist talks, studio visits, interviews, and suggested readings which aim to expand the language surrounding photography, while also unveiling progressive work by local artists in the Pacific Northwest & beyond.

Rose Dickson is based in Portland, Oregon. She received her BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2012. Her work has been exhibited in cities internationally, including: Portland, New York, Paris, Rome, Helsinki, Chongqing and Fukuoka. Recently she has shown work with Humble Arts Foundation (New York), Surplus Space (Portland), Recess Gallery (Portland), Hideout (Paris), Organhaus (Chongqing), Opening Titles (New York) and Upfor (Portland). With the support of the Oregon Arts Commission, Rose has been awarded multiple residencies, including Taidelaitos Haihatus, Finland (2013), Organhaus, China (2014) and Studio Kura, Japan (2015). Currently she is participating in the artist studio program Neighbors, founded by Studio J and housed in the Yale Union Laundry Building in Portland, Oregon. Her work is in the collection of the Rhode Island School of Design Museum of Art and the Smithsonian Museum of American History.