JORDAN CASTEEL
Within Reach at The New Museum
New York City museums are finally opening their doors to the public again, which means that temporary exhibitions cut short due to the pandemic are also making a return. At The New Museum, visitors are getting a second chance to see the captivating work of Jordan Casteel, displayed in the show Jordan Casteel: Within Reach, on the second floor. It is the Colorado native’s first solo exhibition in New York, a city that has inspired her work in multiple ways and she now calls home.
Born in Denver, CO, in 1989, Casteel has already achieved more than most artists could dream of at such a young age. She received her BA in Studio Art from Agnes Scott College (GA) and an MFA in Painting and Printmaking from Yale School of Art (CT). Casteel is now an Assistant Professor of Painting at Rutgers University-Newark, has several exhibitions under her belt and has a well-deserved solo show at The New Museum. All of this is just six years after graduating from Yale. Her large, figurative paintings are based on photography and are collaborative. Her process involves taking a picture of a person who invites her into their space (or of a place she is inspired by) and bringing it back to her studio to turn it into a large-scale oil painting. Her subjects range from her former classmates at Yale, to her current students at Rutgers and members of her community in Harlem. She began mostly portraying male figures but has recently moved on to also representing women.
Jordan Casteel: Within Reach, features works from different series she has produced through the years. One of these is Visible Man, which consists of nude portraits of Casteel’s classmates at Yale. Each picture is exceptionally personal and seeks to show the subject’s environment and personality, moving away from the traditional depiction of Black and brown bodies in art and establishing their humanity. In more recent works, like Nights in Harlem or her subway paintings, they represent people on the street and in her community. These images are based more on her observation of her surroundings. Her latest series, also represented in the exhibition, consists of her students’ portraits at Rutgers University-Newark. It is fascinating to see the artist’s experimentation with light and color to illustrate the energy in a scene. Through careful use of these elements, she shows how she feels connected to different spaces and people.
Although the exhibition’s early closing just one month after its inauguration must have been devastating to many, its reopening couldn’t come at a better time. We now live in a world in which social distancing is encouraged and it is refreshing to see art that is about feeling close to people. During a significant rise of the Black Lives Matter movement, it brings Black and brown bodies into the gallery space, places in which they tend to be under-represented. It is no secret that, even to this day, art has neglected the Black community with few non-white curators, staff, artists and subjects represented in museums.
The exhibition, curated by Massimiliano Gioni, initially opened in February 2020 and will now be available to view from the date of the museum’s reopening (September 15th) until January 23rd, 2021. It is an opportunity to view almost 40 of this artist’s enthralling paintings that give viewers an inside look into the subjects’ lives. For people unable to attend the physical exhibit, one can still find the audio guide on the museum’s website. It is divided into sections with a virtual tour, narrated by Casteel and became available when the museum closed its doors in March.
