Jordan Casteel: First Retrospective at the Denver Art Museum

Until May 2019, Jordan Casteel: Returning the Gaze brings together thirty works by the young African-American artist. The canvases reflect the reality of the African-American men of her environment, from a very personal point of view

Jordan Casteel before one of her works. Photograph by Tyler Mitchell at vogue.com

In 2013 Jordan Casteel was only 24 years old. She was then in Massachusetts (USA), studying landscape painting on a scholarship. The feeling of isolation she experienced during those years, in which she felt “the only dark-skinned person” for dozens of miles, motivated her return to Yale to continue her postgraduate studies. It was then that her artistic point of view took a radical turn to focus on portraiture. Specifically, on capturing the physical and social reality of a group very close to her: the African-American men of Harlem, her neighborhood. Her works, full of intensity and life, have become relevant pieces of the figurative American art of the moment; this has led the Denver Art Museum (located in her hometown) to organize the artist’s first retrospective, with more than thirty large-format paintings made over several years. Its name, Returning the Gaze, emphasizes the artist’s purpose: to show the African-American male figure far from any stereotype, reflecting his everyday life through an apt humanization.

Jordan Casteel talks about her work for the program Art in the Twenty-First Century of the PBS Network. Via Art21

Although it is the first retrospective of Casteel’s work, it is by no means her first exhibition. Her paintings have been the protagonists of successful shows in art galleries, thanks to which the artist has achieved more than deserved recognition. Despite her decided commitment to social art, Jordan Casteel’s works have not escaped controversy: in the midst of the  #MeToo movement she received serious criticism for portraying only male models. In the face of the criticism, Casteel maintained her objective of empowering the African-American men of her environment and focusing on their problems: “I did not want the culture to keep profiting from the body of the black man, more than has already been done historically”. The artist also comments that, of course, she cannot speak for those she portrays, but rather adopts a perspective of empathy from the point of view of someone external to them. “My work really springs from the desire I have to share what I have known with the rest of the world”. The exhibition Jordan Casteel: Returning the Gaze can be visited until May 2019.

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