Jonathan Lyndon Chase is a Philadelphia-based visual artist whose vivid, gestural portraits comprised of painting, collage, and drawing reflect the complexities of Black and queer identity. Chase’s paintings include domestic materials—bedsheets, clothing, and grooming products—to reveal an undercurrent of intimacy and tenderness. Their work often blurs the lines between public and private, also illustrating how private spaces allow us to decompress.
In 2019, Chase was invited as an Artist-in-Residence to conceptualize and produce an original yardage design in FWM’s screenprinting studios. Similar to their process of painting on bedsheets, Chase was presented with the opportunity to create a design that would become the canvas for a new suite of paintings. To inform their work at the start of the residency, Chase pulled from an archive of sketches and drawings to incorporate into their screenprinted design. Chase also integrated this newly created yardage, entitled Bending $ag, into soft sculptures and clothing, which inspired a new way of using textile in their work.
In preparation for Big Wash, their first solo museum exhibition, Chase created a new series of paintings and works on paper in addition to those featuring their screenprinted design. Encompassing both the private and public nature of the body, the exhibition furthers their signature ability to move seamlessly between history, fantasy, and their own biography. Chase depicts Black, queer domestic intimacy with honest transparency, juxtaposed with cultural markers of accessible fashion and trends of the early 2000’s.
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Big Wash: A Conversation
On the occasion of Big Wash, Chase and fellow artist Devin N. Morris engage in candid conversation exploring their practice as Black queer artists living and working today, covering a spectrum of themes including but not limited to: coping during the quarantine, mental health, racist cleaning products, re-domesticating objects, washing rituals, spirituality, ancestry, coming out, love, caring, desire, fleeting, navigating adolescence, domesticity, Black atmosphere, relationships, family, and friendship.
Big Wash Radio on Station LJAM
Check out this “Zoom room turned live radio show in a laundromat,” a collaboration between Philadelphia Contemporary and FWM celebrating the work of Jonathan Lyndon Chase. Presented as an extension of Philadelphia Contemporary’s most recent episode of Love Jawns: A Mixtape, Big Wash Radio was hosted by Philadelphia Contemporary’s Curator of Spoken Word Yolanda Wisher and co-hosts Jaléssa Mungin and Vince Anthony and features an interview with Jonathan Lyndon Chase as well as segments by FWM Curator Karen Patterson, Katie Parry, Nikki Schaffer, and poet Jamal Rashad. The 7-minute mini-mix, released on December 9, 2020, features poetry by Jonathan Lyndon Chase & Jamal Rashad with music by Vince Anthony.
