Jan Dickey

A Letter from the Curator:

I think about corners a lot.

Not so much the way they point outward, such as elbows, but how they direct our attention inward the way a rib cage does. Despite outward appearances corners actually point into themselves towards their contents. Within the parameters that corners create rests something specific and singular. It’s an object, a place, a plane. The location of corners determine how far apart the edges––the borderline––of that something will be. 

As someone who makes paintings I specifically think about the way corners divide and determine the planes we call paintings and the walls that those paintings hang on. Every now and again I come across a painting that I deem a 'corner painting'. That is to say, a painting which very specifically directs our attention to its own corners.

When I saw Andrew Schwartz’s painting, 'Pastoral', on Instagram in early 2023, I said to myself, “Gosh damn, that is a textbook ‘corner painting'." The painting’s compositional makeup sweeps us gracefully from the middle of the piece out toward the corners. Each corner treats us to something a little bit different. The distinct personality of Pastoral’s corners keep us moving and spinning from corner to corner––forever contained within the safety and comfort of this curated corner of space; this object, this plane, this painting.

The Corner Show radiates from this conception of the 'corner painting' toward a consideration of corners and edges––by ten artists––in myriad ways; material, spatial, and conceptual. I invite you to visit D. D. D. D. and discover for yourself what we have prepared for you in these two little rooms on Canal Street in a corner of an Island off the coast of a big scary Continent in the middle of a mad and horrible World in a small corner of a wonderful Galaxy. 

–Jan Dickey, June 2024