Image: Jonathan VanDyke’s An Atmosphere (Detail), 2019, Ink and water-based paints and dye on cotton fabrics, backed with embroidered and dyed linen. Courtesy the artist, 1/9unosunove Rome, and Loock Galerie Berlin.
JONATHAN VANDYKE
How To Operate In A Blue Room
June 3 - 28, 2022
High Line Nine, NYC
Chelsea Music Festival is delighted to present a solo exhibition of recent works by 2022 Visual Artist-in-Residence Jonathan VanDyke.
The artist's sewn paintings, composed through intentionally slow processes of accumulation, and often taking over a year to construct, are made from fabrics gathered from friends and companions. He stains and marks these fabrics through virtuosic painting techniques developed in his Brooklyn studio over the last decade, including gestural painting strategies that he devised in long-term collaboration with dancers and performers from the NYC queer art community of which he is a part.
The artist's installation, created specifically for the Festival, incorporates components that will change and evolve over the month of June, including a selection of the amaryllis flowers that he raises in his studio, a sculpture that drips paint, and unique photocopies of details and scraps from his studio process. VanDyke's works are layered with allusions to art and design history and to domestic craft, and he mounts his paintings on fabricated display structures – in this case, metal shelving components.
Inspired by the unbounded media fluidity of early twentieth century artists like Sonia Delauney and Sophie Taeuber-Arp, VanDyke has long explored the relation between abstract painting and the performing arts, including dance and musical compositions. In his words, both sonic orchestral works and visual abstractions are "explorations of states of mind and experiences of bodies for which one cannot find language." VanDyke conceives of his paintings as devices for long looking and his installations as spaces for slowing down. In making works that are rich with metaphor and subtext, he insists that, "abstraction is not forgetting – abstraction is not a way of removing oneself from the world – but a way of going deeper
Installation Image from “How to Operate in a Blue Room,” solo exhibition by Jonathan VanDyke
Installation Detail from “How to Operate in a Blue Room,” solo exhibition by Jonathan VanDyke
Installation Detail from “How to Operate in a Blue Room,” solo exhibition by Jonathan VanDyke
Durational Art Performance | An Innervated Guest
Drop in to catch an experimental performance created by Jonathan VanDyke. Known for durational performances as long as 48 hours, VanDyke’s new work, created especially for this year's Chelsea Music Festival, was inspired by Fanny and Felix Mendelssohn’s kinship. A pair of performers will improvise from a sonic score, humming and singing in relation to one another while moving through VanDyke’s installation. Audience members may come and go on their own time.
Saturday, June 18th, 2022 - 2:00 - 5:00 PM ET
and
Saturday, June 25th, 2022 - 2:00 - 5:00 PM ET
Vocals | Fred Brown, Saba Shabbir
Learn More About The Artist
Jonathan VanDyke was born and raised in the Pennsylvania countryside and has lived and worked in New York City since 2001. He studied at The Glasgow School of Art and The University of Glasgow as a Rotary Ambassadorial Fellow, The Skowhegan School, The Atlantic Center for the Arts (where he was mentored by artist Paul Pfeiffer), and The Milton Avery Graduate School of Bard College, where he received his MFA. He has exhibited his work in solo exhibitions internationally, including at 1/9unosunove Rome, Loock Galerie Berlin, Scaramouche New York, Four Boxes Gallery Denmark, and The Columbus Museum. Solo performances and commissions have appeared at The Power Plant in Toronto, Storm King Art Center, The Albright-Knox Art Gallery, The National Academy Museum, and Socrates Sculpture Park.. His work was recently included in the landmark exhibition Queer Abstraction, organized by The Des Moines Art Center. He has been a resident at Yaddo, Qwatz in Rome, The Hans Scharoun House in Germany, and The Krabbesholm Højskole in Denmark. VanDyke leads sustained observation and embodied practice workshops internationally. He was recently appointed an Artist in Residence in Studio Arts at Bard College, where he will begin teaching in the fall. He is represented by 1/9unosunove Rome and Loock Galerie Berlin.