Jane Dickson All That Is Solid Melts Into Air at JAMES FUENTES

James Kalm caught up with Jane Dickson just moments before her show “All That Is Solid Melts Into Air” closed at James Fuentes Gallery. This impressive show captures the mood of a vanished world, the glitzy sleaze of late 1970s Time Square. This milieu, and the cultural production it provoked, has recently become the subject of fascination for a new generation of observers looking for some kind of authenticity in a virtual world controlled by sinister special interests. Developing a technique that grew out of her programming of the first digital light board at 1 Time Square, Dickson builds up images of isolated figures using oil stick scumbled over dark grounds of nubby texture, giving the scenes a sense of rising out of urban darkness. The artist gives a brief interview regarding her time living at Time Square, her involvement with the famous 1980 Time Square Show, and her thoughts about the reassessment of the 1980s in New York. This program was recorded February 17, 2019.