Artists Space

Jonathan Lyndon Chase
his beard is soft, my hands are empty

September 8 – December 2

Artists Space is pleased to present his beard is soft, my hands are empty, the first New York institutional solo exhibition of Philadelphia-based multidisciplinary artist Jonathan Lyndon Chase (b. 1989).

A painting in color depicting five Black Queer people within an abstract barbershop environment. The barber to the left of the scene holds clippers to the scalp of one of them positioned in the center. Another barber pictured in the upper right quadrant holds up a pair of shears between two other Black Queer figures with smocked patterning on their barber capes. Sgraffito-like swaths of grid serve as a tiled floor, shown in a floating perspective.
Jonathan Lyndon Chase, City of Beauty, 2023. Courtesy of the artist and Company Gallery, New York. [A painting in color depicting five Black Queer people within an abstract barbershop environment. The barber to the left of the scene holds clippers to the scalp of one of them positioned in the center. Another barber pictured in the upper right quadrant holds up a pair of shears between two other Black Queer figures with smocked patterning on their barber capes. Sgraffito-like swaths of grid serve as a tiled floor, shown in a floating perspective.]

"The domestic is powerful because it’s the foundation of so much we do in our everyday lives. It’s a safe space to allow oneself to just ‘be’ without performing or thinking of the dangers of the outside world."

—Jonathan Lyndon Chase

his beard is soft, my hands are empty presents reimagined versions of environments such as a barbershop and a living room that engender Black Queer interiority, community, and the beauty of everyday intimacy. Combining aspects of the artist’s biography with elements of folklore and fantasy, Chase’s highly spirited, provocative paintings and soft sculptures incorporate materials such as bedsheets and clothing to create an atmosphere of both vulnerability and comfort.

Occupying the entire ground floor of Artists Space, his beard is soft, my hands are empty showcases both newly commissioned and preexisting works. Moving through the exhibition, visitors will encounter paintings, drawings, and soft sculptures whose forms evoke hair clippers, Ultra Sheen Hair Grease jars, and durags. Each doubles as a surface for vibrantly painted and affectionate scenes that portray friends and lovers in familiar settings, at ease and involved in acts of pleasure.

As part of the exhibition, Chase turns the exterior of Artists Space into the facade of a barbershop, complete with its tri-colored barber pole. This transformation emphasizes the complex and delicate threshold between public and private that is particular to Black Queer life. For Chase, domestic space is a locus of self-care and mindfulness, a manifestation of one’s innermost emotions and an extension of the body.

Chase’s immersive installation harnesses the power of memory to map the emotional, mental, and physical territories of the everyday. In their witty, sensual paintings and sculptures, their longing poetry, and their work in other mediums, the artist finds new ways to make the Black Queer body visible.

Jonathan Lyndon Chase works in painting, video, sound, and sculpture to depict queer Black love and community in layers of bright, visceral paint, make-up and glitter. Chase’s variously articulated figures appear suspended in both urban and domestic spaces, with the artist’s dynamic compositions blending emotional and physical, internal, and external states to subvert canonical representations and exclusions of the Black body. Chase has been the subject of recent solo and two-person institutional exhibitions at the Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia (2020–21); Pond Society, Shanghai (2019); and the LSU Museum of Art, New Orleans (2019). Their work has recently been included in group exhibitions at the Baltimore Museum of Art; Rudolph Tegner Museum, Dronningmølle, Denmark; Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio; RISD Museum of Art, Providence; Brooklyn Museum; Philadelphia Museum of Art; Rubell Museum, Miami and Washington, DC; and California African American Museum, Los Angeles. Private and public collections featuring Chase’s work include the Brooklyn Museum, ICA Miami, LACMA, and the Rubell Museum as well as the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; High Art Museum, Atlanta; Bronx Museum; Buxton Contemporary Art Museum, Melbourne, Australia; Wedge Collection, Toronto; Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia; Leslie Lohman Museum, New York; and Woodmere Museum of Art, Philadelphia. In 2020, the Capricious Foundation published Chase’s "wild wild Wild West & Haunting of the Seahorse", an experimental narrative blending horror and science fiction. Chase was born in Philadelphia, where they currently live and work.

Jonathan Lyndon Chase Exhibition Brochure

Boyle, Meka. “What to See in NYC: September Gallery Guide.” Elephant Magazine. September 15, 2023. Online.

Smith, Roberta. “Shows That Give Off Pleasure, and a Bit of Body Heat.” The New York Times. September 2, 2023. Online.

Solomon, Tessa. “The Can’t-Miss Gallery Shows Opening in Tribeca This Week.” ARTNews. September 8, 2023. Online.

Major support for Jonathan Lyndon Chase: his beard is soft, my hands are empty is provided by Beth Rudin DeWoody, Noel E. D. Kirnon, Tony Salame—Aïshti Foundation, and George Wells. Exhibition support is provided by Bernard I. Lumpkin and Carmine D. Boccuzzi. In-kind support is provided by Company Gallery.

Support for Artists Space’s exhibitions and programs is provided by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Lambent Foundation Fund of Tides Foundation, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, The Cowles Charitable Trust, The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation, The Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, The New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, The New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature, The Milton and Sally Avery Arts Foundation, May and Samuel Rudin Family Foundation, and Herman Goldman Foundation.

    A painting in color of two Black Queer people in a red interior setting. One of them, wearing gray underpants, gazes out of the picture plane, while another profile of their head turned to the right is superimposed. The barber on their right is shaping the seated person’s hair with clippers. The rounded edge of a tabletop with a mirror, comb, and shears atop of it is pictured to the left of the image. A single window depicting snowfall at night can be seen behind the two Black Queer figures.
    Jonathan Lyndon Chase, The Shape Up, 2023. Courtesy of the artist and Company Gallery, New York. [A painting in color of two Black Queer people in a red interior setting. One of them, wearing gray underpants, gazes out of the picture plane, while another profile of their head turned to the right is superimposed. The barber on their right is shaping the seated person’s hair with clippers. The rounded edge of a tabletop with a mirror, comb, and shears atop of it is pictured to the left of the image. A single window depicting snowfall at night can be seen behind the two Black Queer figures.]