Jordan Casteel: Within Reach

“Within Reach” at New Museum is the first solo museum exhibition in New York City dedicated to works by artist Jordan Casteel (b. 1989, Denver, Colorado). Bringing together nearly forty paintings spanning her career, including works from the series Visible Man (2013–14) and Nights in Harlem (2017), along with recent portraits of her students at Rutgers University-Newark.

Her large-scale oil paintings portray people from communities in which the artist lives and works (former classmates at Yale, where she obtained her MFA; street vendors and neighbours near her home in Harlem; and her own students at Rutgers University-Newark in New Jersey). Casteel insists upon the ordinary and informality, whilst maintaining the frontal view of an official portrait.