The Long Glance
40-hour performance
performed by Jonathan VanDyke
Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY
May-June 2011
"Over the course of a standard American workweek (five 8-hours days), I stand and stare at the Jackson Pollock painting Convergence, 1952, in the public galleries of the museum. Taking my place just before the museum opens each day, and with only slight movements, I never turn away from the painting. Viewers are free to come as close to me as they wish. I become still in front of an "action" painting, while my labor becomes looking."
With One Hand Between Us
Scaramouche, NY
October 2011
40-hour performance for three actors & installation with three sculptures
Featuring Laryssa Husiak, David Rafael Botana, and Anthony Wills, Jr.
Presented by Performa 11
Curated by David Everitt Howe
Over the course of one workweek (five 8-hour days), three performers silently move and gesture in a storefront space that is visible from the street. Three sculptures frame their movements and drip paint into the space, slowly and continuously. The space is clean when the performance begins, and over time becomes stained by the sculptures and the actors, whose costumes are also leaking color. The three performers improvise their movements based upon a score created collaboratively with VanDyke. The relationships of power and gender dynamics amongst the three are always in flux.
Keystone Color Works
Project with the students of William Penn Performing Arts Institute
2010
Video projected as a loop, 7'58", silent
Made possible through a grant from The Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation in association with YorkArts and The City of York, Pennsylvania, Department of Economic Development
Over the course of an Artists & Communities residency at the William Penn Performing Arts Institute (a magnet arts high school in York, Pennsylvania), I learn of an abandoned former paint factory, Keystone Color Works, located within the city limits. Each room in the factory was painted a different primary or secondary color, based on the pigment that was used there. The students and I, working there, develop a series of improvised movements and create games that are recorded on video. The resulting video painting is presented as a projected loop.
The Hole in the Palm of Your Hand
solo exhibition
Scaramouche, NYC
September–October 2009
"The sculptures arranged inside the gallery appear at first like specific objects of the Minimalist era; rectangular forms made from cedar wood, woven webbing, and plastic sheeting are installed almost clinically. Each work is structured around a concise geometry of rectangular forms and employs a muted palette of grays and browns. Underfoot a brown tiled floor, also designed by the artist, begins to reveal a rupture in the cool pastiche of the installation. Puddles of brightly colored liquid paint gather on the floor. A close investigation reveals that this paint is dripping slowly from inside the sculptures. In a large piece entitled Asymmetrical Relationship, the source of this paint is two cast plastic tubes that rupture a tightly woven surface of black webbing. The paint will drip for the duration of the exhibition, changing shade each day..."
Gloved Impediment
Installation & performance
Performed by Enrico D. Wey and Ben Kerrick
Organized by Jackson McDade
HQ, Brooklyn, NY
July 2009
"VanDyke’s installation is a realization of the artist’s ongoing impulse to make work that slowly unfolds and changes as it performs for the viewer. In his installations and photographs, color field and abstract expressionist painting serve as a backdrop that is ruptured by his investigations. His interest in the modernist legacy is not a purely formal one, but an expansive interest in 'the space around this work – the way it was integrated into homes and museums, the way it was received by both the critical establishment and the broader public, the psychology lingering under and behind the work’s surface, the bodies that made it...'"