Jonathan DeDecker

Sebastian Gladstone is pleased to present Jonathan DeDecker’s first solo exhibition with the gallery, featuring a suite of six new abstract paintings and five paintings on paper. DeDecker’s paintings are wholly focused on the materials, a generalized concept of the abstract, and a process of painting where intense time- and pressure-based processes push the flat, painted surface into something relief-like and sculptural.

DeDecker’s painting employs a method in which stacks of flat muslin canvases are compressed, trampled, opened up, painted on, and repeated until the desired surface is achieved. Gestural marks are created through the scumbling, scratching, and mashing of repetitive layers of paint. DeDecker views abstraction as an attitude related to perception in mapping out a range of imagery. The works range from highly spontaneous marks, such as splashes and stains, to quiet, thoughtful layers brought together with varying intensity. The intention here is to move painting towards a sublime process for creating, acting, and viewing. Within the exhibition, small moments, if not the gestures at-large, hint towards a sentimentality of the sublime and the ethereal.