Anders Dickson

Anders Dickson (b. 1988 Wisconsin, USA) lives and works between Amsterdam and New York. While his practice gravitates predominantly around painting, other mediums are also used and assembled in immersive installations. Many themes pervade the practice, but the recurrent concepts reveal an interest in understanding, weirding, memory, and liminality. The artist works very intuitively using a DIY approach to incorporate diverse materials like cardboard, grapefruit rinds, felts, wire, and other found materials. The general conceptual background driving the works originates in his research of high-strangeness and fringe topics like ufological theory as hypothesized by thinkers like Erik Davis, Jeffrey Kripal, and Jacques Vallée. The ubiquitous forms and scenes resist any urge to deliver a message about what the viewer is to think. It's far more interesting to stumble upon something. If it is ambiguous enough, there is a desire to linger and try and recognize what it is. This process facilitates a chance for viewers to digest and come to terms with understanding as an essential principle of entering Dickson’s practice. While the veneer is filtered through both the biographical and the cultural references, the audience is invited to situate Dickson’s art in their own frame of reference. The oneiric world that the artist crafts is one where nature, culture, absurdity, and reality clash. His dense landscapes refuse to confine themselves to any categories. Instead, Dickson makes space for alternative knowledge to come through, inviting the viewer to enter a sublime realm for wonder and contemplation. He believes that “between mythology, philosophy, and nature there is a reflective space where one confronts the mystery of personal identity in contemporary society”. His integration of the strange into the material serves in adjusting the lens for self-questioning. Born in 1988. Lives and works in Amsterdam and Paris. Education: 2017 – 2019 – De Ateliers, Amsterdam 2014 – 2017 – Staedelschule, Frankfurt am Main 2010 – 2014 – Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Kuenste Karlsruhe SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS 2023 Frieze London with Wschód (Focus section), London 2022 Powercells, The Commons, P/////AKT, Amsterdam 2021 LISTE BASEL with Wschód, duo show with Adam Shiu Yang Shaw, Basel Other truths from the party, Wschód, Warsaw 2020 Sudden Wilt (w/ Clémence de la Tour du Pin), Balice Hertling, Paris CULT OF THE DIRTY SUNFLOWER, Izacaia, Vienna 2019 Hobo Chili and the songs of rain, Wschód, Warsaw Bone Orchard, Te Bakery, Annet Gelink Gallery, Amsterdam Once A Closely Guarded Secret (curated by Martin Herbert), De Ateliers, Amsterdam 2018 Waterbound with Smokie Allies, The Oracle, Berlin Studies in Transfiguration and Beyond the threshold and back again: An introduction to the hero’s journey, Gisela Capitain, Cologne 2017 St. Elmo’s Fire, The Beach Office, Berlin The Future of the American Lawn, JAGLA, Cologne 2016 Summertime Witchcraft (with Aileen Murphy), The Fort, New York Croissant – Absolventen Ausstellung der Städelschule, MMK Obscure Motions, Basis Project Room (with Lena Phillips), Frankfurt am Main Rundgang 2016, Städelschule, Frankfurt am Main H-O-R-S-E, Johan (with Soley Ragnarsdottir), Frankfurt am Main 2015 GO(O)D VIBRATIONS (with Xerxes Oakman), Kunstverein Letschenbach, Karlsruhe Nachtwache (with Marco Breu), Ettlingen Kunstverein, Ettlingen SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS 2022 Barbe a papa, CAPC MUSÉE D’ART CONTEMPORAIN DE BORDEAUX Man’s Traces in Nature, Wschód, Warsaw 2021 WALK!, Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt 2020 Perhaps a window, Stadium, Berlin 2019 Hinky Punk, Billytown, The Hague Ford Every Stream, Galeria Acappella, Naples Everything Ordinary, PiK, Cologne WHOOHW HAAH HUUHUUH (curated by David Zink Yi), Lovaas Projects, Munich 2018 Paranoid House, Vleeshal, Middleburg Fairy dust and wanderlust, Ornis A Gallery, Amsterdam Flowers, The Root Canal, Amsterdam 2017 Wohnfront Megadark, Plan5, Stockholm Permanent Tourist (curated by Line Ebert, Franz Hempel, Beatrice Hilke), Le Meridien Hotel, Frankfurt am Main Monday is a day between Sunday and Tuesday, Tanya Leighton Gallery, Berlin 2016 We the Dulles, Johan, Frankfurt am Main 2015 Der Zweite Blick, Galerie Scharmann Laskowski, Cologne Pentaposition, Orgelfabrik, Durlach Re:done, Ettlingen Kunstverein, Ettlingen GRANTS AND PRIZES 2015 – Kuenstlerhilfe Stipendium, Frankfurt am Main 2013 – Preistraeger der Rotary Club Karlsruhe fuer junge Kunst 2012 -Preistraeger der Jahresausstellung der Kunstakademie Karlsruhe