Contributed by Lucas Moran / In art, limitations often define, shape, and mold strengths. We can embrace drawbacks and spin them into gold. An impoverished de Kooning, living off ketchup packets and free coffee, turned to house paint to create some of his most compelling work. A bedridden Matisse cut paper. Scarcity, oppression, impairment – these forces have shaped the course of art history. Rather than relying on convention, Jan Dickey – investigator, tinkerer, and forager as well as painter – has immersed himself in studying how things break down, bond, and hold together. “The High Collapse,” now on view at 5-50 Gallery, is the culmination of that endeavor. Rabbit skin glue, black walnuts, carnauba wax, cochineal – an entire spectrum of organic matter – compose the surface of his works not as novelty but as the point.
Much of this series imagines a world where meteors collide, tectonic plates shift, and life begins. Scorched surfaces appear to flake and fracture unpredictably, but Dickey understands his materials thoroughly and controls them well. He tests their integrity, pushing them to the brink, then mending, sealing, rebuilding, and sometimes even relining, a technique typically reserved for restoration. Using a paint applicator to delineate space, he employs masking tape to designate where yellow will degrade, blue will oxidize, or a rusted red might form a beak-like shape, then leaves the canvas outside for nature to render a surface resembling a fragile state of decay, like sheets of rice paper laid over a toxic spill.
In making Blood Horizon, Dickey held a stencil over the surface, tracing a star-shaped silhouette that became the ghost of the composition, mostly obliterated by the time the piece is done. In Flame-Tanager, birdlike shapes and colors settle into something closer to a traditional composition. Light comes not from a star stencil but from a window, perhaps for birdwatching. Cranberry Hibiscus is a collision of robin’s egg violet, Pepto-Bismol pink, and greyish crimson, with sinuous beige lines striating through it, hinting at string theory. The surface feels cosmic but impenetrable, akin to a Mark Bradford painting even if the tools and processes are entirely different. The diptych Evening Grosbeak reads like a nightscape, a mountain range under a black moon. It feels both earthly and otherworldly, as if contemplating expansive molecular unity – how everything is made of the same matter.
While Dickey’s pieces can appear cast off – sun-dried remnants of failed experiments – they are in fact labored over, sealed with egg yolk and beeswax, and bound by homemade remedies. Privileging materiality and process over conventional composition, his work is in the strain of abstract painting that includes Lydia Gifford, Bill Jensen, and Robert Ryman. Though quasi-archival, it also recalls the kinetic experimentation of Dieter Roth and even Warhol’s piss paintings. More than anything, it eloquently reminds us of our smallness in the world. That can be a kind of relief.
“Jan Dickey: The High Collapse,” 5-50 Gallery, 5-50 51st Avenue, Long Island City, NY. Through June 8, 2025. Note: This weekend is LIC Arts Festival, featuring a slew of Open Studios throughout the neighborhood.
