In the 6½ by 9 foot “Poolside,” Kasey orchestrates the shadows and limbs of the four fragmented bathers to create a sonata of themes and variations on volumetric forms and flat negative spaces. Jordan Kasey, “Practicing Piano” (2017) (detail) (photo by the author for Hyperallergic) Potatohead features in “Upside-down Head.” Meanwhile, the ominous “At The Table” displays a glowing blue and red array of empty dishware that surrounds the turned away head, while three strange disembodied fingers creep in on the right to caress the tines of a fork. But then there is also the weirdly luminous and dreamy face with Ms.
#RAPT NEO PATCH#
Her experimentation has resulted in explosive yet compressed compositions, as in “Practicing Piano,” with its fractured shards of gray fingers, mauve lips, piano keys, shadows, a blue patch of clothing, and glossily reflective mahogany, all topped by an absurd yellow jewel of an eye like the star atop a Christmas tree. The result is an ambiguity and intimacy that feels totally contemporary.
Although sharing formal explorations with older painters like Dana Schutz and Nicole Eisenman, Kasey has developed an idea of space and light that owes its complexity to traditional shading, shadow, and tonal control, but is nevertheless obviously artificial in its eccentric color, cinematic scale, and close-up framing. The force that drives the engine of Kasey’s work is her eschewal of the flat-earth ideology (collaged, cartoony or photo-derived, super-flat figuration) of many of her contemporaries. Installation view of Jordan Kasey: Exoplanet at Nicelle Beauchene