Thaddaeus Ropac has taken on the illustration of Jordan Casteel in collaboration with the New York gallery Casey Kaplan, which has represented the American painter since 2016.
Ropac’s first exhibition of recent work by Casteel will happen in its London house in April, adopted by her first solo present in Europe at its Paris gallery subsequent 12 months. Casteel was beforehand represented by Massimo de Carlo gallery, which she joined in 2021 and the place she had an acclaimed solo present, There’s a Season, in its London premises throughout Frieze week in October of that 12 months.
Born in Denver, now dwelling and dealing in New York, Casteel takes inspiration from figurative painters akin to Alice Neel and the folks and communities during which she lives for her vibrant, large-scale works. As an alternative of asking her topics to pose inside a conventional studio, Casteel typically pictures them the place she encounters them, “assembly folks the place they’re versus asking them to enter my house”.
Jordan Casteel, Naima’s Present (Deon, Kym and Noah, 2023)
Picture: David Schulze. © Jordan Casteel. Courtesy Thaddaeus Ropac gallery
Portray, Casteel says, “turns into a instrument to get folks to see the multiplicity of ourselves: our unhappiness, our pleasure, our love, our loss, our moments of stillness, the moments that don’t get heard”. Her topics are key, however so is the method in drawing them out: “As sections of the portray start to construct, the load begins to inform the story, pulling and constructing, with fields of color on the canvas which are generally nearly topographical maps on anyone’s face or of their palms.”
Casteel’s work is included within the touring exhibition The Time is All the time Now: Artists Reframe the Black Determine, which opens subsequent month on the North Carolina Museum of Artwork, having travelled from London’s Nationwide Portrait Gallery (2024) and the Philadelphia Museum of Artwork (2024–25).
“Jordan Casteel stands out in her era of painters for her extraordinary acuteness of remark, and empathetic remedy of her topics,” says Thaddaeus Ropac, whose gallery now represents over 70 artists. “A magnetic sense of proximity and directness defines her painterly method, as she intimately captures their humanity and private spheres. She questions methods to be seen and methods to characterize, reflecting on interconnectedness, belonging and id.”
