WARREN DYKEMAN:
GLYPH & GROUND

October 22 - December 5, 2026
Saturday, October 24, 5-7pm


studio e opens the second exhibition of its new 2026 fall program with GLYPH & GROUND, featuring a selection of new paintings and drawings by Seattle-based artist Warren Dykeman. Growing up in Kennewick, Washington, on the edge of the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, Dykeman was immersed in a landscape shaped by industry and secrecy, an environment whose residue continues to inform his visual language through Cold War color palettes, warning signs, roadside graphics, and the simplified vocabulary of public information. Through this layered visual language, Dykeman explores the authority of symbols and the ways meaning becomes embedded in everyday forms. Working across painting, drawing, and collage, he brings together elements of folk art, sign painting, vector graphics, and vernacular design to consider how context, memory, and place shape the ways we read and assign meaning to the symbols that surround us. Detailed with his familiar motifs, the work features vases, trees, and flames, alongside his well-recognized silhouetted figures, standing in profile with broad-brimmed hats and big-heeled boots. Overlapping these elements, Dykeman interrupts and recontextualizes their legibility. Rather than resolving into fixed narratives, they collide and compete for attention, creating works that embrace tension, ambiguity, and visual miscommunication.


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