Jonathan Lyndon Chase

In Wind Rider Jonathan Lyndon Chase creates an immersive installation of sound, sculptures and paintings centered around the hyper masculine world of cowboys. Often touted as white and heterosexual, the cowboy is a conduit of terror and consumption; it’s very existence compounds erasure of black body, space, and culture. By layering this parable with the artist’s experience of coming out in the year 1999, Chase renounces the colonization of black queer bodies and confronts the complexity of an American motif.

Chase seamlessly blends the external with internal, creating fluidity for viewers to move through both historical gesture and fantasy. In ethereal, yet enveloping American landscapes, the artist references the Fletcher Street Urban Riding Club, a non-profit organization sponsoring black youths in North Philadelphia, where the artist grew up. A herd of horses led by bare-chested cowboys, some adorned in baseball caps, charge along a central painting — heated with a scrawl of lightning and distilled vulnerability of bodies, as they move through the storm. In other works, urban palettes of windows light the dim path for horse and rider.

This narrative is punctuated by specific motifs from Chase’s own personal memories. Smoldering flames paired with crosses and Baptist Christian iconography evoke a prophetic setting of a hot Philadelphia summer in 1999. Verging on Y2k and the artist’s journey from childhood into adolescence this summer detailed Chase’s burgeoning feelings of lust and the recognition of their sexuality. Bright sun flowers and steaming food on a grill, recall family barbecues at Chase’s grandmother’s house, a setting filled with both the comforts and simultaneous complexities of a family gathering. By introducing these autobiographical symbols into historical imagery, Chase asks us to reconsider the canonical allegory of the cowboy and challenges the defining characteristics of American masculinity. Brightened with the visibility of beauty and desire, the cowboy figure morphs from a symbol of sovereign masculinity to one of intimacy and personal growth.

Wind Rider is Chase’s second solo exhibition at Company Gallery. Other upcoming solo shows include Big Wash opening at The Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia in November 2020. wild wild Wild West & Haunting of the Seahorse, the artist’s second book published with Capricious, is now available for purchase. Chase was born in 1989 in Philadelphia, PA where they currently live and work.