General Assembly is pleased to present Making America, Levi De Jong’s inaugural solo exhibition. Drawing from the visual language of American iconography, religious symbolism, and pop culture, the artist uses abstraction as a tool to reconfigure meaning — creating works that confront inherited narratives and invite the viewer into new ways of seeing. Through material and form, his work constructs a visual language of tension, belief, and becoming. For this exhibition, De Jong has created a series of striking flag paintings that contemplate our shared values, and tell a deeply personal story of the artist’s own journey.
In this new body of work De Jong engages with one of the most potent and iconic symbols in the world, the American flag. Though the artist has reduced the flag to its most minimal forms, the works’ composition of horizontal rectangles is instantly recognizable to the viewer. In utilizing the American flag, De Jong continues in the tradition of artists such as David Hammons, Claes Oldenburg, and Jasper Johns who have worked to enhance or subvert its meaning.
For his part, De Jong approaches the flag through the lens of his upbringing in rural northwest Iowa, in America’s heartland. Indeed, the story of these works is inextricable from the story of De Jong himself, with each carefully considered element stemming from a moment in his personal history. References to this history are most richly apparent in De Jong’s choice of materials - silicon, bitumen, and enamel are all materials used to build the barns that dot Iowa’s landscape. Such materials are designed for utility and not beauty, and De Jong finds inspiration in this understated strength.
These materials, once used as construction elements, now serve as vessels carrying De Jong’s memories. For the artist, these materials embody the working class values of the American Midwest: deeply practical and with determined purpose. The flags’ evocative titles give form to these values: Valor, Unity, Love and Justice all serve as maxims, imbuing each work with a talismanic meaning.
At their core, national flags reflect history, territory, unification, and shared identity. They symbolize a collective essence. But flags can also represent divisions; issues of party, identity and nationalism can erode a flag’s universality. De Jong removes the American flag from these considerations. The artist’s flags instead offer an alternative unification in the realm of our most deeply held values. In this way, De Jong’s flags become quiet emblems of a shared humanity.
