Love at It’s Best is an analysis of warfare, sexual exploitation and genocide, which aims to shed light on the plight of the civilians whose lives have been tainted by these brutal realities. While Rodney Dickson specifically references Vietnam, Cambodia, Korea, World War 1 and 2, as well as conflicts in his native Northern Ireland, he intends for these pieces to be universal commentaries on current global events. The ongoing war in Iraq poignantly underlies all of the work displayed, as Primaries for the 2008 US Presidential Election began just days before the exhibition opens.

The exhibition will feature six large scale paintings from Dickson’s series Kill ‘em all and let Buddha sort ‘em out. The paintings are predominantly white surfaces with imagery and text-related to the above mentioned wars. They are layered over several months time as Dickson creates and destroys, so the paintings building up over time and have a history as objects. Dickson applies a number of media onto the surfaces and collages additional elements on as well, some of these steps will remain, some will be removed, some obscured or altered as Dickson works. Dickson has stated “These are not pristine works of art; these are not pampered lifeless works. I am not trying to show how clever I am at manipulating paint nor am I trying to show how well I can draw. I want to create an object that has a life of its own and exists in the real world. I use War as a subject, this is partly because of growing up in Northern Ireland during ‘The Troubles’ and partly because I see it as the worst human tragedy of our time.”

The exhibition will also include a version of Dickson’s War Remnants Museum, a series of 6 neon lights, and a group of ten floral paintings.

For Art Basel Miami Beach 2007 Rodney Dickson created a ramshackle structure that served as a ‘homemade’ museum; Dickson recreated such museums he has visited and documented in both rural locations within third-world countries, as well as within the Untied States. Now Dickson will recreate this War Remnants Museum’s collection of authentic artifacts, historic objects altered by the artists, and original works of art that recreate war remnants.

The neon lights relate to Dickson’s ongoing installations of the Queen Bee Bar, a full-scale interactive performance / installation that mimics a typical Saigon bar that American soldiers frequented during the war to find women. Enjoyable and seemingly light-hearted the installations function as an actual bar. The audience in fact follows in the footsteps of American soldiers by enjoying the bar and unwittingly creating the debris, which will be “memorialized” and left behind permanently after they go in a manner similar to US troops leaving Vietnam. The audience is creating the art of the aftermath. In this exhibition, six neon signs will reference the locations around the world where this bar has been created. Since 1992 Rodney Dickson has researched and exhibited work related to his interest in Vietnam and Cambodia. There he witnessed the aftermath of conflict in its indiscriminately brutal form: it is from this point that Dickson’s work proceeds. This will be his first exhibition at Klemens Gasser & Tanja Grunert, Inc.