LONDON.- At Sadie Coles HQ Bury Street, Jonathan Lyndon Chase has made an exhibition of new paintings using the umbrella as prop and metaphor. In Downpour the umbrella becomes a refuge, veiling and cloaking figures caught in storms or torrents of rain. In each painting, water acts as a destructive and cleansing force, evoking grief, meditation and transformation. The umbrella, as a performative device, offers both a barrier and gateway between the body and the liminal space where interior and exterior converge. Serving as a fragment of the domestic, the protective structure fluidly carries a personal space into the external world.

Lyndon Chase has repeatedly used interiors – private domestic spaces, hidden alleys, windows into the bedroom – as the backdrop to depict a diaristic narrative. In this latest body of work, lone figures gaze outward from their facade of privacy, coyly glancing outward. Other characters invite companions into their guarded perimeter, painted in conversational confidence or passionate embrace. The paintings are rich with intimacy, tension and innuendo, offering a means of reclamation and empowerment as the subjects venture outside to face the potential hostility of a newly judgemental society. Eruptions of lightning, fertile vegetation and swollen raindrops surround the interlocked figures. Lyndon Chase’s subjects may avert the gaze of the viewer, but they also permit the voyeurism of private moments of longing, lust and on occasion, loneliness.

Lyndon Chase illustrates their view that our interaction with space is fundamental to the human experience, made tangible through the body as a vessel. They urge us to consider the figures on display, their surrounding environment and the connection between queerness and nature, as well as our own personal relationship with our bodies and how we inhabit space. Downpour expands the canon of Black Queer storytelling and image-making, an intention deeply embedded in much of Lyndon Chase’s work, providing a sanctuary where the tender familiarity of fellowship becomes a form of activism.

Jonathan Lyndon Chase (b.1989, Philadelphia PA) obtained their MFA from Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, in 2016. They live and work in Philadelphia. Recent solo exhibitions include his beard is soft, my hands are empty, Artist Space, New York (2023); Now I’m home, lips that know my name, Sadie Coles HQ, London (2023); WEST PHILADELPHIA BORN AND RAISED, Shandaken Projects, Brooklyn, 2021; Big Wash, Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia (2021); Wind Rider, Company Gallery, New York, (2020); Pond Society, Shanghai, (2019); and Quiet Storm, Company Gallery, New York (2018). Recent group exhibitions include KUNSTKAMMER, Lismore Castle Arts (2025); The Time Is Always Now: Artists Reframe the Black Figure, Philadelphia Museum of Art (2024); The Culture: Hip Hop and Contemporary Art in the 21st Century, Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto and Cincinnati Art Museum (2024); In Praise of Black Errantry, Palazzo Pisani S. Marina, Capiello Widmann, Venice (2024); INHERITANCE, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2023); I’ve Only Got Eyes For You, Sammlung Philara, Düsseldorf (2023); Dark Light: Realism in the Age of Post-Truths, Aïshti Foundation, Lebanon (2022); Unmasking Masculinity for the Twenty-first Century, Kalamazoo Institute of Arts, Kalamazoo, USA (2022); Fire Figure Fantasy, ICA Miami, Miami; REPEATER, Sadie Coles HQ, London (2022); WHAT DO YOU SEE, YOU PEOPLE GAZING AT ME, Sadie Coles HQ, London, (2021); New Grit: Art & Philly Now, Philadelphia Museum of Art Philadelphia (2021); and New Acquisitions, Rubell Museum, Miami (2018). In September 2024 Lyndon Chase produced a major commission of new works for Acne Studios to create an installation for the women’s S/S 2025 collection show, presented during Paris Fashion Week.