The interrelation of desire—deferred or briefly fulfilled—and entertainment is the current that runs through Jane Dickson’s five decades of work. The artist made her earliest paintings of carnivals and theme parks in the 1980s, while living in Times Square—another place promising pleasure for the right price. She translated imagery from her photographs into nocturnal compositions in which the neon lights of ferris wheels and game booths pop against inky grounds. Still fascinated by the way spectacle can take us on a ride, Dickson revisited the subject matter in the first years of the twenty-first century. Featuring paintings made between 2004 and 2025, Wonder Wheel emphasizes how fairgrounds seduce not despite their artificiality but because of it.
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