Jordan Casteel's Portraits Gaze Right Back

Those who saw Casteel’s work in MoAD’s Black Refractions at the start of this year know the Bay Area’s in for a treat. Now, a solo museum show (the young New York artist’s first, traveling from the Denver Art Museum) brings her large-scale portraits of Harlem community members to the Cantor. Casteel transfers her project of sustained looking to the subjects of her paintings—they steadily return the viewer’s gaze through Casteel’s vibrant, thick brushstrokes. —Sarah Hotchkiss