Signs and Symptoms

Since the 1970s, Jane Dickson has been documenting the streets of New York. The artist, who lived in Times Square in the early 1980s and worked on its first digital billboard, is uniquely attuned to the city’s urban texts. In Promised Land at Karma, Dickson mines her archive of photos of textual street signage from decades past and translates them into paintings with textural surfaces, achieved with various materials, including oil stick on linen and acrylic on felt. Decontextualized and often viewed at oblique angles, Dickson’s signs point toward a quietly melancholic version of the city, populated by anonymous figures hoping to “Save Time” or find a “Bargain.” Dickson’s New York is perhaps not so different from the current one: a land of dreams on the brink of turning into nightmares.