Artist: Anders Dickson
Exhibition title: Powercells, the commons
Venue: P/////AKT, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Date: April 24 – May 29, 2022
Photography: Charlott Markus / all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and P/////AKT, Amsterdam
– and its discharge of static is milky opalescent
The gap dividing the commons from the public is volatile. While the public sphere is orchestrated by systems of governance, the commons is not. There’s neither proprietor nor lease.
Instead the space is available for use and the cohabitation of several entities simultaneously.
Here’s an effort to concentrate on obscure bodies in motion. Certain moments crystallize into concrete forms and leave others to ruminate in flux. Like carnage spilling from the wreckage of a crash; mechanisms of flight bleed with anxiety in face of pace and the impermanence of sedentary living.
Imagine for a moment technology stripped bare from its cold aluminum jackets and glass. Vegetable souls and Rock hearts could have instead provided alternative methods for performing tasks. Organic tech would bloom independently from today’s normalized spaces and alter the means by which we engage them.
Where are you right now? To locate oneself, you must consider your position in relation to another point or body. But that’s mercurial, and true north doesn’t really mean that much. We are vapors dispersing in space: not a top or a bottom to our name… and for those we pass by, who’s the alien then pilgrim?
Perhaps property gives you a false comfort of identity. Do you know your true name buddy? Staying stationary in that ownership may allow your tap root to sink deep in the dirt so as to give that sense of security. Yet, we’re outside of each other and the task at hand is to understand this. You’re elsewhere behind that mask and your history is only your own.
In a time when our desires seem conditioned for a rapid processing and labeling of the environment, I cherish that which evades immediate recognition. The figures are no longer masked by the pictures of their role and they promenade in their suggestive states. The commons are understood as resources to which any individual in society has the rights to: be it air, water, or tree. This extends to cultural resources too. In theory it is a social practice of neglect towards a state or market government; opting instead for one generated by the individuals through their own use of the commons in consideration.
A return to the commons not only disassembles the ownership of property but it also decimates the chains holding that image to your body.
Opt for a radical return to the commons of the body. Bypassers relate through similar efforts to exhibit their own self-defined system of being. The meaning isn’t what matters so much as the appearance of a persistent logic. No more do I want to be ascribed an identity, nor submit to the veneer of the picture of that role. Please, Let me puss, ooze , secrete and crash in my form.
Anders Dickson’s multifaceted practice invites intimate encounters with an obscure, weird mirror of the ubiquitous world. Themes ranging from spirituality, memory, and ‘high strangeness’ are coloured by traces of Americana as the artist implements them into his work. Hallucinatory paintings bleed into space in the form of sculptural objects, photography and video, assembled in immersive installations.
At P/////AKT Dickson is presenting an immersive installation consisting of new works. The project marks the first episode of Turning to Dust and Bones, a series of solo exhibitions by six artists that is loosely dealing with the mind, memory and a sense of being uprooted.
Anders Dickson (USA) exhibited his work at The Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt (2022); Kayoko Yuki Gallery, Tokyo (2021); Wschod Gallery, War-saw (2021); Annet Gelink Gallery, Amsterdam (2021); 15 Orient Gallery, Paris (2020); The Oracle, Berlin (2018); Vleeshal, Middelburg (2018); Gisela Capitain Gallery, Cologne (2017); The Beach Office, Berlin (2017), and Tanya Leighton Gallery, Berlin (2017). He attended the De Ateliers (2017-2019), The Staedelschule in Frankfurt am Main, and the Staatliche Akademie der bildenden Kuenste, Karlsruhe. Dickson is also member and co-founder of the netherlands-based artist initiative Root Canal (www.rootcanal.eu).
The Artist’s Library
The Artist’s Library is a growing collection of titles that have, in one way or another, been relevant to the artist’s practice. They will be on view during the exhibition and become part of the P/////AKTSALON collection of books afterwards. Anders Dickson highly recommends:
– Silvia Federici, Re-enchanting the World; Feminism and the Politics of the Commons, 2018
– Erik Davis, High Weirdness; Drugs, Esoterica, and Visionary Experience in the Seventies, 2019
About P/////AKT
P/////AKT is a non-profit exhibition space for contemporary art that organizes and facilitates large scale solo presentations through which the audience gets the opportunity to gain insight in the thinking space of the artists.
P/////AKT provides a platform for exceptional, emerging artistic talents, who distinguish themselves through their unique and authentic language and who are capable of giving a different view on the current way of thinking. They are stimulated to work out new developments and are given the opportunity to present their work to a relevant audience. Furthermore, P/////AKT always asks the artists to produce new work that relates to the specific nature and dimensions of the given space and to present their own mental space as an overall presentation within the given context.
Anders Dickson, Powercells, the commons, installation views and details, P/////AKT, 2022. Photographs by Charlott Markus, courtesy of P/////AKT Amsterdam
Anders Dickson, Powercells, the commons, installation views and details, P/////AKT, 2022. Photographs by Charlott Markus, courtesy of P/////AKT Amsterdam
Anders Dickson, Powercells, the commons, installation views and details, P/////AKT, 2022. Photographs by Charlott Markus, courtesy of P/////AKT Amsterdam
Anders Dickson, Powercells, the commons, installation views and details, P/////AKT, 2022. Photographs by Charlott Markus, courtesy of P/////AKT Amsterdam
Anders Dickson, Powercells, the commons, installation views and details, P/////AKT, 2022. Photographs by Charlott Markus, courtesy of P/////AKT Amsterdam
Anders Dickson, Powercells, the commons, installation views and details, P/////AKT, 2022. Photographs by Charlott Markus, courtesy of P/////AKT Amsterdam
Anders Dickson, Powercells, the commons, installation views and details, P/////AKT, 2022. Photographs by Charlott Markus, courtesy of P/////AKT Amsterdam
Anders Dickson, Powercells, the commons, installation views and details, P/////AKT, 2022. Photographs by Charlott Markus, courtesy of P/////AKT Amsterdam
Anders Dickson, Powercells, the commons, installation views and details, P/////AKT, 2022. Photographs by Charlott Markus, courtesy of P/////AKT Amsterdam
Anders Dickson, Powercells, the commons, installation views and details, P/////AKT, 2022. Photographs by Charlott Markus, courtesy of P/////AKT Amsterdam
Anders Dickson, Powercells, the commons, installation views and details, P/////AKT, 2022. Photographs by Charlott Markus, courtesy of P/////AKT Amsterdam
Anders Dickson, Powercells, the commons, installation views and details, P/////AKT, 2022. Photographs by Charlott Markus, courtesy of P/////AKT Amsterdam
Anders Dickson, Powercells, the commons, installation views and details, P/////AKT, 2022. Photographs by Charlott Markus, courtesy of P/////AKT Amsterdam
Anders Dickson, Powercells, the commons, installation views and details, P/////AKT, 2022. Photographs by Charlott Markus, courtesy of P/////AKT Amsterdam
Anders Dickson, Powercells, the commons, installation views and details, P/////AKT, 2022. Photographs by Charlott Markus, courtesy of P/////AKT Amsterdam
Anders Dickson, Powercells, the commons, installation views and details, P/////AKT, 2022. Photographs by Charlott Markus, courtesy of P/////AKT Amsterdam
Anders Dickson, Powercells, the commons, installation views and details, P/////AKT, 2022. Photographs by Charlott Markus, courtesy of P/////AKT Amsterdam
Anders Dickson, Powercells, the commons, installation views and details, P/////AKT, 2022. Photographs by Charlott Markus, courtesy of P/////AKT Amsterdam
Anders Dickson, Powercells, the commons, installation views and details, P/////AKT, 2022. Photographs by Charlott Markus, courtesy of P/////AKT Amsterdam
Anders Dickson, Powercells, the commons, installation views and details, P/////AKT, 2022. Photographs by Charlott Markus, courtesy of P/////AKT Amsterdam
Anders Dickson, Powercells, the commons, installation views and details, P/////AKT, 2022. Photographs by Charlott Markus, courtesy of P/////AKT Amsterdam
Anders Dickson, Powercells, the commons, installation views and details, P/////AKT, 2022. Photographs by Charlott Markus, courtesy of P/////AKT Amsterdam
Anders Dickson, Powercells, the commons, installation views and details, P/////AKT, 2022. Photographs by Charlott Markus, courtesy of P/////AKT Amsterdam
Anders Dickson, Powercells, the commons, installation views and details, P/////AKT, 2022. Photographs by Charlott Markus, courtesy of P/////AKT Amsterdam