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Institute of Contemporary Art Miami

Collection

Jonathan Lyndon Chase
Night Dress, 2018

Materials
Acrylic, pastel, marker, glitter, and graphite on cotton sheet
Dimensions
24 x 20 in.
Credit
Gift of Susan and Michael Hort
Image credit
Image courtesy of Kohn Gallery, Los Angeles.
Jonathan Lyndon Chase Night Dress, 2018 Acrylic, pastel, marker, glitter, and graphite on cotton sheet Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami Gift of Susan and Michael Hort

Jonathan Lyndon Chase creates powerful images of queer Black life through painting, sculpture, drawing, and collage. His vibrant visual language, often accentuated with bold colors, glitter, and rhinestones, explores intersections of gender, race, and sexuality through rich historical and pop cultural references. Invoking the work of Romare Bearden and the influence of collage, Chase’s figures intersect and even merge with one another and their surroundings, creating intimate and emotionally and sexually charged scenes.

Night Dress was included in Chase’s 2018 solo exhibition “Sheets,” which featured works portraying gender nonconforming persons in abstracted domestic spaces. In this work, Chase renders a subject with colorful makeup and a shadowy beard against a background of faded pastel. Rhinestones and glitter scatter across the figure’s fragmented topless torso. The cartoonish outline of a hand seems to reach into the figure’s open mouth while the outlines of feet appear on its torso. Rendered on a bed sheet, this intimate portrait suggests various sets of paradoxes: concealing and revealing, intimacy and performativity, dressing and undressing, and their inherent desires. 

Jonathan Lyndon Chase (b. 1989, Philadelphia) earned a BFA from the University of the Arts, Philadelphia (2013), and an MFA from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia (2016). His work has been widely shown, with solo shows presented at the Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia (2020); Pond Society, Shanghai (2019); and the University of the Arts (2013, 2015), among others. He has participated in various group shows, including at Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Overland Park, Kansas (2019); LSU Museum of Art at the Shaw Center for the Arts, Baton Rouge (2019); Rubell Family Collection, Miami (2018); Taubman Museum of Art, Roanoke, Virginia (2018); Woodmere Art Museum, Philadelphia (2017); and Green Hall Gallery, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut (2016). Chase’s work is included in the permanent collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Bronx Museum, New York; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; High Museum of Art, Atlanta; and Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; among others.