Artist Kim Dickey explores how we construct environments both physically and psychologically while in response to what is natural vs. cultural, interior vs. exterior. The artist's intensely assembled, glazed terracotta and porcelain works consist of many thousands of unique, yet seemingly uniform elements. Dickey creates reflexive sculptural landscapes that refer to their own construction while beguiling us toward an elaborate reverie. Using gardens as her reference, ordered plots in the natural world, Dickey freely reinterprets decorative ceramic traditions such as bocage: the closely clustered, miniature flowers traditionally used in the Rococo. The effect of such elements viewed in resplendent multiples is further visually amplified by her shifting palette and ignited image-making. Dickey's theatrical sensibility and historically inspired forms, position her sculpture in the in-between space of presence and absence, the real and the ideal while mirroring past cultures and the natural world.

 

Artist and Professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder, Kim Dickey received her BFA from Rhode Island School of Design and her MFA from Alfred University. She has exhibited her work in museums such as: MASS MoCA (MA), the Everson Museum of Art (NY), the Museum of Arts and Design (NY), and the Contemporary Art Museum, Honolulu (HI), among others. Dickey has created permanent installations at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Denver (CO), The Lab at Belmar (CO), for the Danish Ministry of Culture (DK), and a commission for the Denver International Airport (CO), in addition to many private site-specific commissions. She has also participated in invitationals in Australia, France, Germany, Japan, Korea, Sweden, Taiwan, the United Kingdom, and the United States. She has had solo shows in New York, Los Angeles, Kansas City, and Denver and shown with galleries such as Garth Clark, Jack Tilton, Pierogi, White Columns, and Sherry Leedy. Dickey is represented by Robischon Gallery in Denver, CO.