How can we create a different model for holding still, one that enacts warmth, reserve, attentiveness, maintenance, thoughtfulness, and receptivity? And one that counters the quick reactions build into social media platforms, and gives preference to positions of sustained listening, checking in, and making sense, while also noting where sense cannot be made. I value action and movement, I'm not arguing that we preference mind over body, or prize academic theorizing over practice. Rather, let's regard pauses as intrinsic to processes...

"For more than a century, many Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer artists have turned to the language of abstraction to illustrate diverse facets of sexuality and gender... Queer Abstraction unites contemporary artists who utilize the amorphous possibilities of abstraction to convey what it means to exist on the margins."  –Des Moines Art Center

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Dear Viewer:

I am in the studio, preparing this show. Around me are hundreds of pieces of painted and stained textiles, stacked and gathered on tables. You will find whole t-shirts stained with gradations of color, through a process of accumulation that takes weeks. Laid out on the ground are denim jeans that have absorbed thin pours of paint, and some that have been dyed so that their blues have turned blue-green and blue-violet. Soon I’ll rip these t-shirts and jeans apart, but for now they’re whole enough that you could assemble an outfit....

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Installation of paintings, dripping sculptures, photographs, and scraps from 2014-present

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"Over the course of 7 days, Jonathan VanDyke stands and silently contemplates 16 historic quilts for 3 hours each. VanDyke chose these graphically dynamic quilts from the museum's collection. These rarely-displayed quilts, some of which have never been on public view, were originally used as functional objects in the domestic sphere, and in many cases their makers are anonymous. The performance takes place within an installation in the museum's central galleria space, offering long views of these objects' aesthetically bold and abstract patterns..."

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Jonathan VanDyke curated this exhibition, featuring two of his paintings along with objects he chose from the museum's collection. The artist installed a custom-made wallpaper for the space, made from over 600 unique black-and-white photocopies. In choosing works from the museum's collection vaults, the artist sought out objects that were rarely, if ever, on public view, displaying them in a manner that blurs the distinction between material culture and objects of art. An important quilt, made by African-American quilter Angeline Pitts between 1875 and 1910, is a centerpiece of the exhibition...

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