Cordoned Area
Series of 3-hour performances
Created with and performed by Bradley Teal Ellis &
David Rafael Botana
Socrates Sculpture Park, NY
July 2011
Vox Populi, Philadelphia
September 2012
National Academy Museum, NY
July 2013
I <3 NY Performance Series,
Fire Island, NY
July 2014
Two men, who are also a couple in real life, move upon a large canvas over the course of three hours. They start clean; as paint drips from their uniforms and they make contact, color moves from body to body. The choreography of the piece, improvised from a score created collaboratively during several months of intensive dialogue, both mirrors and distorts the real life dynamics between the two men. Their movements shift from athletic to dance-like, from fast to slow, from tender to violent.
Oltre l'Oblio
1/9unosunove, Rome
October–December 2013
Performance, featuring Sonia Viviani and Jonathan VanDyke, presented November 2013 by QWATZ
"In Oltre l'oblio, VanDyke presents a spatial and temporal experience in which his works, and one’s engagement with them, gradually but continuously change. Within the first gallery, VanDyke has constructed an apparatus that shifts from sculptural, to architectural, to painterly armature, an open wooden enclosure that simultaneously obstructs and reveals its interior and exterior to the viewer, as if through apertures. Circling outside the enclosure, one can see the front and back of six paintings installed within, and six photographs hanging without. Migrating throughout the photographs and paintings are geometric patterns that in the photographs appear in the performers’ harlequinesque habits, and in the paintings, transform and accumulate as if bricks, prison bars, or walls..."
–Lisa Hayes Williams
Self Portrait as My Mother,
as an Actress, as a Painter,
as a Stranger
Series of 3-hour performances
Tops Gallery, Memphis
featuring Terri Lynn Phillips
April 2017
I <3 Fire Island Performance Series, NY
July 2014
featuring Laryssa Husiak
presented by NYPAC
On Stellar Rays, NYC
featuring Laryssa Husiak
July-August 2013
1/9unosunove, Rome
featuring Sonia Viviani
November 2013
Presented by QWATZ
Knockdown Center, NY
featuring Bethany Ides
December 2013
Scaramouche, NY
featuring Laryssa Husiak
September 2009
A woman arrives, unannounced and anonymously, at a gallery during an opening event. She is dressed in professional attire. Paint drips continuously from her purse, staining her dress and the space around her. She lingers silently for hours.
In some versions of the work, a male-presenting figure takes the leading role, while in other versions, two performers interact as both of them leak paint from their outfits. Power dynamics shift constantly, so that the audience is uncertain whether the two are family, lovers, friends, or colleagues.
"Scaramouche is pleased to present The Painter of the Hole, Jonathan VanDyke's second solo exhibition with the gallery. VanDyke's new work evolves from his wall-mounted and free-standing sculptures, first exhibited at Scaramouche in 2009, that 'perform' as they continuously drip paint directly onto the floor, and from his many recent live performances, in which actors and dancers move silently for hours while paint drips upon them and passes from body to body. The works offer signifiers we associate with painterly process – canvas, stained and marked with color, appears both in objects and is represented in photographs – yet VanDyke has pushed and pulled painting in such a way that these signifiers are displaced. Undoing media-specific boundaries, VanDyke re-orients modernist conventions, conflating painting with fiber arts, fashion, dance, textile design, and photography..."
Obstructed View
installation & series of performances
Performed by Francisco-Fernando Granados and Tyler Gledhill
The Power Plant, Toronto
November 2011 – January 2012
Two men share exactly one outfit of clothing. They exchange clothes over the course of several hours, moving silently upon and around a locker room bench as a sculpture high above them drips paint upon their bodies. They take positions in relation to one another – sometimes desiring, sometimes oppositional. As they move about the space, they leave traces of color upon the walls, the floor, and one another. Commissioned by The Power Plant as part of the exhibition Coming After, focussed on the practices of queer artists who came of age in the shadow of the AIDS crisis.
Curated by Jon Davies
Installation of sculptures, photographs, video, and a live performance,
featuring David Rafael Botana and Bradley Teal Ellis.
Curated by Andrew Suggs.