The self-proclaimed love child of Missy Elliott and Romare Bearden, Philadelphia native Jonathan Lyndon Chase creates powerful pictures of queer black life, rendering intimate moments with extraordinary tenderness and nuance. In his hands, the canvas becomes the space to craft a new visual language to explore the intersections of race, gender, and sexuality, in vivid, visceral, and raw works that combine painting, sculpture, drawing, and collage.
Since receiving his MFA from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 2016, Chase hit his stride in 2018 with solo exhibitions in New York and Los Angeles that show tender, intimate moments of queer life. In “combing my hair”, featured in Quiet Storm at New York’s Company Gallery, Chase shares a moment of repose between a couple at home wearing only brightly colored basketball shorts while doing cornrows. A young man sits on the floor between his boyfriend’s Nike-clad legs, a copy of for Lil’ Kim’s Hardcore CD on the floor setting the mood. It suggests the pleasure of things to come, or things that came before – much like the exquisitely explicit erotic works showcased in Sheets at LA’s Kohn Gallery.
Chase continues to follow his star, bringing his work to the global stage this September with his first international solo show at the New Century Art Foundation’s Pond Society in Shanghai. He also plans to release a new project focusing on the issue of mental health, acknowledging his bipolar disorder in his work and recognising the need to create a safe space in which different people and energies can engage and interact.
Miss Rosen