Jordan Casteel, Damani and Shola, 2022, Oil on canvas, 90 x 78 inches
The Hill Art Foundation is excited to present Jordan Casteel: Field of view, on view September 13 through November 23, 2024, which brings together 25 works spanning the past decade of Casteel’s practice. Her first solo presentation at the Foundation is curated by Lauren Haynes, Head Curator at Governors Island Arts and Vice President for Arts and Culture at the Trust for Governors Island in New York City.
Field of view offers glimpses into Casteel’s life over the last ten years, revealing the environmental and psychological elements that unite her bodies of work. The show aims to encourage conversations between paintings conceived in diverging spaces, years apart, revealing the artist’s distinguished style and clarity of vision. Sites and subjects shift with formal and thematic through lines in her renderings of textures and textiles, bold color palette, and compositional symmetries between the human form and the landscapes we inhabit. “Field of view,” a photography term that describes what is visible through a camera’s viewfinder, alludes to Casteel’s process of photographing her subjects prior to putting paint to canvas. The title simultaneously acknowledges Casteel’s perspective and inherent presence in each composition. These notions will be further explored in a forthcoming zine designed by Pacific and featuring text by curator Lauren Haynes.
The presentation invites viewers to consider sites within sites, informed by the Hill Art Foundation’s floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the High Line and Chelsea. The city views act as both backdrop and subject, embodying what is implied in oil on canvas. Furniture by Batsheva Hay and vintage rugs evoke a living room or an artist’s studio, bringing comfort, rootedness, and individuality out of the picture plane and into the gallery.
Messages and markers of time are revealed through intentional observation. Casteel’s interpretations of the intrinsic qualities of a space, whether intimate or shared, give
insight into the collective experience. Harlem Public (2021), depicting the facade of an iconic eatery at 149th Street and Broadway, is plastered with “masks required” signs; a sandwich board advertising takeout and delivery; partial renderings of “thank you New York” and a mention of first responders; and a poster of Breonna Taylor with the message “#SayHerName,” thrusting us back into the height of the COVID-19 pandemic and the Black Lives Matter movement. Amina (2017) demonstrates that this same sensitivity to light, shadow, and reflection was present four years earlier. The two works share a playful incorporation of portraits into what are, in effect, landscapes. On the signage of a hair braiding business, we find 37 individual images of women.
Interchanging setting and subject, Casteel depicts plant life sourced from her own garden in the Catskills in layered swaths of color that echo the gestural forms of her figurative portraits. In Peak Summer (2024), purple basil, tomato vines, and nasturtium and marigold blossoms overhang the garden bed, rendered in true-to-life hues or partial outlines. In leaving her underpainting visible, Casteel draws a parallel between the processes of painting and natural growth.
The exhibition closes with Jordan Hand (2014), the earliest painting in Field of view. The work is a partial self-portrait that obstructs Casteel’s visage while asserting the same indisputable presence. The artist is curled on her bed, surrounded by patterned textiles in a scene that mirrors the exhibition’s viewing experience. The floral pillowcase foreshadows the garden paintings that follow. The layers of paint describe sprouting stems and leaves at peak bloom—swift markings that signal new beginnings.