Workbook: An Activation

Emmanuel Gallery, University of Colorado

February 2025

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The Emmanuel Gallery is pleased to present the debut iteration of Workbook, a new piece by New York-based artist Jonathan VanDyke. Long working at the intersection of painting and performance, in Denver VanDyke will mount three abstract paintings that will be "activated" by visual and performing arts students.

 

VanDyke made the three featured paintings by means of an inventive mark-making process. For these works, he struck raw canvas – laid out on his studio floor – with paint-soaked whips. These canvases were further marked by soaks, stains, drips, pours of paint, and washes of inks and dyes. Finally, VanDyke cut this material into hundreds of pieces, arranged the pieces in specific patterns, and sewed the pieces back together. The resulting paintings are embedded with the marks of action held in dynamic tension by geometric order.

 

Performance and visual art students will use these paintings as the visual "score" through which to devise sounds, movements, and performative gestures: the painting's "marks" will signify like the notes of a musical composition. The paintings become "activated" as performers translate painted marks into qualities such as volume, pace, location, and frequency. Drawn from UCD and Metropolitan State University, in the lead up to the event the students will work closely with VanDyke in learning possibilities for interpretation. During the live activation of Workbook, the students will draw upon this experience as they improvise in real time, riffing with the paintings and with one another.

 

Student-performers, drawn from the classes of professors Nicole Predki, Rian Kerrane, and Nima Bahrehmand, will cycle in and out of the space throughout the afternoon. Their responses will include sound, movement, and the manipulation of sculptural objects, with a special emphasis on abstract gestures. The activation will have the quality of an evolving, live rehearsal: a durational performance without a clear beginning or end. Visitors may come and go throughout the afternoon and stay for as long as they wish.

 

Professor of Visual Arts Rian Kerrane's multimedia solo exhibition, Housekeeping, on view in the gallery through March 8, serves as backdrop for this special one-day work. 

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