Alumnus Dylan Vandenhoeck '17 Presents Solo Exhibition at Jack Barrett Gallery

Visual Arts alumnus Dylan Vandenhoeck ’17 presents his solo exhibition What Do You See When You Close Your Eyes and Nod “Yes”? at Jack Barrett Gallery in New York, NY. 

The paintings in Vandenhoeck’s series are as titillating as they are mystifying. A warped room centers on a reflective window, rich shades of blue and purple serving as an abstract, dreamy backdrop for pops of brightness like the egg-yolk yellow of a lampshade, or the frenzied magenta of a sunset. A disorienting nighttime cityscape unfurls, its mostly dark scene studded with unexpected jewels: the ruby glow of a traffic light, the citrine haze of a streetlamp. Then, there is more luminosity. A headless figure floats in a field thick with amethyst, emerald, and gold. A white house is bordered by greenery on all sides; a telescoping pair of hands frames the Lilliputian image.   

Each painting seems to pose a fascinating question: how do we engage with something that is both comfortingly familiar and astonishingly strange? Vandenhoeck’s work participates in an especially open dialogue with its audience; the variety of extracted meanings rests with the viewer and changes from one moment to the next. 

In a press release for the show, artist Sarah Esme Harrison asked Vandenhoeck what he wants from those who view his work. Vandenhoeck said, “I would hope they would turn away and notice their own version of this.”

Harrison considers her own experience with Vandenhoeck’s series: “The paintings from the show remind me of running to the point of nausea, when exhaustion leads to a thought: you can articulate something without a name, but how? By being present in your experience. By participating in reality. By allowing your experience to change you.” 

Vandenhoeck’s work has appeared in New York and European exhibitions, which include Home Alone, Jack Barrett Offsite Programming, Long Island, NY (2020); Neighborhood Watch, Downs & Ross, New York, NY (2020); Group booth with Jack Barrett Gallery, Sunday Art Fair, London, UK (2019); Group booth with Jack Barrett Gallery, NADA Chicago Invitational, Chicago, IL (2019); Paint School, Klaus Von Nichtssagen, New York, NY (2019); Routine á la Mode, Kimberly Klark, Queens, NY (2019); Deeper Than Inside, High Art, Paris, France (2019); Now You See It, 1969 Gallery, New York, NY (2018); Group booth with Office Baroque, Art Brussels, Brussels, Belgium (2018); Two person booth with High Art, Paris Internationale, Paris, France (2017); and Totally Untitled, YUI, New York, NY (2017). 

Vandenhoeck was a Paint School Fellow at Shandaken Projects from 2018 to 2019, received a Rema Hort Mann Foundation Emerging Artist Grant in 2017, and was awarded the Cooper Union Jack Stewart Award of Excellence in Painting Prize in 2012. 

What Do You See When You Close Your Eyes and Nod “Yes”? will be on display from October 30 to December 20, 2020. Viewers can visit the gallery on Wednesday and Thursday by appointment as well as on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday from 12 pm to 6 pm.