“Returning the Gaze” — In good hands with Jordan Casteel

Jordan Casteel — In Good Hands with “Returning the Gaze”

We’re in good hands with Denver-born artist Jordan Casteel who is in her first solo museum exhibit at the Denver Art Museum. The 1989 graduate of Denver East High School has an impressive debut at the age of thirty with thirty paintings in “Returning the Gaze,” on display from February 2 — May 26, 2019. While the title of the exhibit and the central focus of the featured works is obviously the eyes and gaze of the subjects, it’s also the hands of her figures that aptly capture our attention through the authenticity of the human beings, mostly Black males, she spotlights and honors with her paintings. She handles her subjects with a poignant honesty, even vulnerability that somehow becomes a strength. Oh, yes, we’re in good hands.

The vague but present Harlem Renaissance vibe, notably in the bold bright color schemes of Casteel’s show, reminds me of Archibald Motley who sought to portray African-American life in all its vibrancy at a time when society resisted seeing Black people that way, or even at all. Casteel’s use of vivid colors, angular lines, and everyday scenes of Black men brings that same life to her subjects. It’s the vendors on the streets, the anonymous riders on the subway, and the men she knows as neighbors, friends, and family who bring honesty and life to the images. Both the eyes and the hands of her figures are striking in the way they reach out openly to the viewer. This first solo museum exhibit for an artist who has been making a name for herself since moving to Harlem following the completion of her MFA at Yale University is a huge step forward in her career, as well as a glance back at her roots. The choice of Harlem is pivotal to her intent of spotlighting and sharing the worlds of African-American men on the streets of her adopted city, one that has embraced her as she investigates and spotlights it.

Every painting is a storybook of time and place, and the museum exhibit offers a brief five-minute video interview with Casteel in which she offers insight and commentary on her inspiration and techniques. When she first moved to the city, she subconsciously fell into “the natural New York thing,” looking down or at her phone and avoiding eye contact. Then she realized and acknowledged she was “doing disservice to myself and the experience of being out in Harlem,” and she began an earnest effort to notice people. Jordan truly sees people, and it’s a great homage to have Ralph Ellison’s words adorning the wall — from Invisible Man: “I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me.” Casteel’s exhibit does not allow such refusal, as her portraits and scenes welcome and even demand attention with her rich colors and bold brushstrokes that create a strong impression of lives worthy of our attention. From the first step inside the show, viewers are drawn warmly into scenes of Harlem, such as in Bayum, a neighborhood Ethiopian restaurant visited by Casteel. Getting in close on the painting, it’s almost possible to inhabit the scene, smell the spices, hear the clink of dishes, and even feel compelled to request a table and menus. Up close, you can also experience and appreciate the richness of Casteel’s complex style of layers, lines, and textures that bring life to her subjects.

Casteel’s technique is to create her portraits from photographs of friends, family, and neighbors to capture the beauty in their everyday existence. She notes how her understanding of the history portraiture to that point had simply been “a whole bunch of dead White people,” and that following her move to Harlem, she was intrigued by possibility of “putting a living brown body out into the world,” especially a world that had long marginalized and even criminalized such figures. Her subjects then became the people on the street that she was no longer looking away from but instead directly engaging. The stare — the “gaze” — of her subjects is the essence and power in scenes of neighborhood residents like “James, decked out in a beautiful brown suit, glowing, stunning” and street vendors like “Charles” whose looks reveal both strength and vulnerability. The same is true in “The Baayfalls” with Senegalian jewelry vendor Fallou Kalsome Wadje who notes, “Jordan, she really sees me.” As a result, the portraits are often huge, sometimes 7x6, and Casteel mentions the intentionality of that dimension, as the subjects are “larger than life,” and she intends to paint them in a way they will stand out and “occupy the space,” especially in ways they haven’t always been able or invited to.

Casteel’s medium is classic oil on canvas, and her style is realistic still lifes with a touch of contemporary impressionism. Denver art critic Ray Rinaldi observes, “ … a daughter of Harlem … she paints with abandon … freed from the bonds of realism by generations of abstracters.” The bold brush strokes and colors are vibrant and alive in so many pieces like “Harold,” a street scene with a man’s rumpled brown suit accented by yellow and orange light bouncing off the wall behind him. Yet pictures like “Cowboy E, Sean Cross, and Og Jabar” are also earthy and gritty at times, emphasizing the feel of the streets where Casteel’s subjects live and work. Her lines capturing the wrinkles in the clothing and the creases inherent in the baggy style of the wearer emphasize clothing as identity, and there is a muscularity to the angles and the shades on the faces, capturing light from so many sides. Amidst all that, it’s the hands of her figures which become all the more powerful in large portraits, almost disproportionate at times, yet there is an incredible tenderness in the hands and fingers, often cradled in a lap or draped across a surface. In Casteel’s “Subway Series,” the hands of her figures are the signature details in her images, centering the piece as her subjects’ hands rest easy or delicately hold shopping bags or cell phones. “Nothing is ever exact or perfect in her paintings,” noted an older viewer as I sat in front of “Timothy,” in his “Black is Beautiful” T-shirt, and that authenticity is what makes the pieces so perfect.

“Returning the Gaze,” curated by Rebecca Hart of the Denver Art Museum, is a powerful statement for an artist and her subjects — in each of her figures, the eyes lock on the view, staring intently, but receptively, back at the viewer. They stare with intention, asking the viewer to “pay attention, notice me, see me.” The experience of the Black male and the myriad ways that society experiences him is central to Jordan’s work. At the age of just thirty, Jordan Casteel has arrived with great presence on the contemporary art scene, and her eye — her gaze — has so many ways to grow in art that she will be wowing us for years to come.