Chase’s large scale paintings feature queer black curvaceous bodies intertwined and overlapping in a number of intimate positions, they feel very personal and almost private in the way they tell stories of intimacy and relations. At such a grand scale the paintings demand attention. These relations are often played out within ‘abstract interior spaces’ allowing for the human subjects to be the main focus for attention.

‘A certain generative energy between people—the desire to feel one’s physical boundaries melt into another—is perhaps the strongest thread through all of Chase’s work; it’s also one of the aspects of their paintings that drew collector Mera Rubell’s eye. “For me, there’s a lot of action and sensual moments within the canvas,” she says of their paintings. “There’s a communication that is private and loving. Within each painting are humans trying to find each other.”’ (Thackara, Tess. 2018)

Chase’s Website

Chase is one of the artists I focused my studies on for my extended essay and I don’t regret this one bit, the more I read about their work the more I found myself fascinated by it, I am particularly a fan of their Solo Exhibition titled ‘Big Wash’ at the Fabric Workshop and Museum in Philadelphia as there were large sculptures and installation work combined with paintings and all using a running visual theme of some fabric that Chase designed, this show was about the lines between public and private in queer lives and queer bodies.

Installation View from Big Wash and Fabric Workshop & Museum

Jonathan Lyndon Chase – butt naked dressed in nothing but pearls (2018)

Jonathan Lyndon Chase – Pretty Dark Song (2018)

Jonathan Lyndon Chase – Man With Heads (2016)

“I knew I wanted to paint about ambiguity, but I didn’t want to make ambiguous images,” ~ (Christina Quarles in an interview)

Christina Quarles is a queer woman who draws ambiguous bodies intertwined in tangled and confusing anatomies. Her work is definitely one of my biggest influences to continue developing my work into a coherent body of work. I love the colours and texture of mediums she uses, they are quite bright and soft. It looks like she uses coloured pencils to create multiple dimensions on the limbs that feel almost like ligaments and muscles. I like that some areas feel very clear and refined and others feel a bit more muddy and ambiguous creating moments of clarity impeded with confusion.

Christina Quarles, Peer Amid (Peered Amidst), 2019

Christina Quarles, An Absense the Size of Yew, 2019

Christina Quarles, Pour Over, 2019

I am very interested in the exhibition ‘Queer Abstraction’ featured at Des Moines Art Centre June-September 2019, I am hoping to base my dissertation off of this exhibition and the theory behind it. It featured the following artists: Math Bass, Mark Bradford, Elijah Burgher, Tom Burr, Mark Joshua Epstein, Edie Fake, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Nicolas Hlobo, John Paul Morabito, Carrie Moyer, Sheila Pepe, Prem Sahib, Jonathan VanDyke, and Jade Yumang, some of which I will be studying further. I have been reading an essay written to accompany the exhibition by David J. Getsy titled ‘Ten Queer Theses on Abstraction’ which has been really eye opening. Though being interested in many different art styles and avenues I have always had a fixation on abstraction and have not until recently quite understood why. Abstraction is a way for queer people to translate their social and bodily relations into formal relationships and allows amorphous shapes to describe a deeper connection to the physical world that sometimes lacks in more figurative work. As Getsy states in his essay  ‘“queer abstraction” addresses the same desire to work from queer experience and queer revolt’, this desire to deviate from what is considered ‘normal’ is not uncommon in the lgbtq+ community, it’s not so much the need to feel different but stems from a feeling of otherness which can be imposed by misinformation and misunderstanding. This inner turmoil generally manifests itself through revolution,  which especially in the art world becomes a need to reject traditional standards and subvert peoples initial reactions and labels.

‘Queer Abstraction’ at the Des Moines Art Center. Photograph by Rich Sanders.

Math Bass – Newz! (2019)

Mark Joshua Epstein – Working Lunch (2018) Photograph by Guy Ben-Ari.

Felix Gonzalez-Torres – “Untitled” (Water) (1995) Photograph by Rich Sanders

Jade Yumang – Page 5 (2016)