For his first solo exhibition with Carl Freedman Gallery, Jon Key has created a new series of oil and acrylic paintings alongside two new large screenprints. The show also includes painted furniture and screenprinted wallpapers that transforms the gallery into a patterned space.
Jon Key is a Queer Black man originally from the small rural town Seale, Alabama now living and working in Bushwick, NY. A writer, designer and painter, his work excavates the lineage and history of his identity through intersecting themes: Southernness, Blackness, Queerness, and Family. Borrowing from design history and principles, Jon’s contorted hard lined figures are brushed with family histories reflected in Polka Dots and plaids across the surface of his works. In opaque interior and exterior environments that conceal American histories of pain and oppression, Jon layers stories of Queer ancestry. Through archival empherma and artifacts Jon offers glimpses of strength, support and resilience.
