Brian Dick

Using a post-studio style of practice, Brian Dick continues to examine his apparent fascination with self identity through self portraiture. Referring to his work methods as ‘playful,’ he compares his process to a science project: "It's the building of it that's interesting; it seems that most of my ideas start with my body and then collapse into a push/pull play of self."

Brian Dick’s ongoing exploration into identity is seen throughout all his work. Investigating self-identity and what it means by using different materials and processes and activating different ideas, he starts with his body as the center point and moves outward into different directions according to how he feels at the moment. In past works, this has taken the form of Dick and a partner engaged in a boxing match, wearing crocheted afghan heads (that completely block sight and sound) with cell phones strapped underneath to their ears and oversized afghan gloves (Boxing Love), a museum “mascot” created from secondhand materials found at local thrift stores (Nationwide Museum Mascot Project), and playful temporary sculptures (surrogates) created out of bedding—blankets, quilts and pillows—that serve double-duty documenting his daily ritual of making his bed differently each day (Making My Bed).

With Me Me Me, Dick addresses his latest quest through mimicry, caricatures and prosthetics. Within this new body of work there is a self-portrait of Brian standing outdoors in a field wearing a 10 foot air-filled balloon on his head with a giant caricature of him on it, and “self portraits” created with friends who, wearing prosthetics molded from his face, inhabit various likenesses of Brian. In another work, Brian Dick delves ‘below the skin’ by embodying the essence of his subject (actor Tim Robbins) through facial memory, or what he terms ‘muscle mimicry’. These and other works illustrate Dick’s continuous dissection of the varying ways the self can be generated and represented. Each can be seen as an experiment—a playful, humorous excavation into his true identity that continues to unearth endless possibilities.

Brian Dick graduated with an MFA from the University of California-San Diego in 1995, where he studied under his mentor, Alan Kaprow. Most recently, in 2008, Dick participated in “childsplay,” the inaugural exhibition of San Diego’s New Children’s Museum, and “Inside the Wave: Six San Diego Artists Construct Social Art”, at the San Diego Museum of Art. Brian Dick has also participated in solo and group exhibitions at The Centre Georges Pompidou, The Musée d’Art Moderne, and Galerie Chez Valentin, in Paris, as well as exhibitions and film festivals in Prague, Dallas, Houston, Kyoto, and Berlin. This is Dick’s second solo exhibition at Luis De Jesus Seminal Projects; his first show, Boxing Love, was held in December 2007.

Me Me Me

November 22- December 27, 2008

Press Release