Jessica Dunne
Profile
"At first glance, Jessica Dunne's nocturnal urban landscapes seem intent upon capturing a series of moments in time. Scenes emerge, as if at random, from an inscrutable darkness, scenes capable of achieving a strange, portentous beauty in the harsh splash of artificial light, like snapshots made by a restless insomniac wandering across a stilled and sleeping city. These sights have caught Dunne's attention for reasons that are never completely clear, but they constitute a record of her passage, the tokens of her existence in the midst of a landscape cloaked in silence and isolation. She takes notice of things in places that take no notice of her, and they could hardly be more commonplace: a tollbooth; a bridge; a highway tunnel; an empty, rain-slicked street; a brightly lit intersection; a house that seems suddenly ominous in a flush of colored light; an exit ramp show does not follow—no, she continues on. If the subjects of these pictures distinguish themselves at all, it is because they have succumbed to the artist's scrutiny, their mystery brought forth in the process of depiction." — Bruce Nixon, from Jessica Dunne (Fresno Art Museum, 2003)