Jordan Kasey

Nicelle Beauchene Gallery
Can’t believe I get to be here for the opening…The first time I saw her work In 2017 I randomly ended up in the prior location of Nicelle Beauchene and I was the only person there for the entire hour I spent in the one cavernous room.

Orbit is the name of the show and I couldn’t feel more connected…it’s been a favorite word of mine more recently in my life / a word I think a lot about. 

First painting I see has a baby and I automatically know this must be something experienced recently (birth)

This is the first time I’ve seen something like this in her paintings…this electric yellow green color. The smaller amount in the corner is highly effective.

It is sweltering in NY and my boobs are sweating in a dress from work I no longer wanted clinging to my body, which makes it incredibly hard to think — happened upon a bathroom. Thanked the nice person Patrick for letting me use it and they said “oooooh fit change.” I had to. Now I am clear and comfortable. We chat for a moment enthusiastically about how I first and last saw her work in 2017 and easily became my favorite painter since then.

Someone mentions it being BIG faces and now it’s about small faces…baby faces.

Patrick said no one paints like her. I agree and will use it later. Thick to flat texture happens so inconspicuously I feel that I want to bite into them like a dense donut

I move into the bigger gallery space and spin in a complete circle. First painting I see is both still and fast at the same time.

The color punches me in the face (change later) it impacts me like these water droplets might and they suspend how they would. While I’m writing about it someone very unenthusiastically takes a pic and is not smiling but seemed to want to. Two photos was enough and he walked away

Can’t get over the close ups she gives us. Angles I never thought of but see in my dreams (I wrote about this in 2017)

Turning around I see my favorite one I had only seen briefly prior on my tiny screen

Turning around I see my favorite one I had only seen briefly prior on my tiny screen

Someone says “oh my god! tittie“ in an endearing way and the gallery is crowding.

Hands look so huge and yet so accurate to the size in comparison to the baby. A lovely swell of flesh and color sweeping over in ways so controlled and real yet unattainable in real life.

Side note I keep seeing people walk around with the flaccid candles hanging out of their breast pockets and I don’t know what that’s about but they are funny

The figures are so sturdy and mass-y it reminds me of how my girlfriend thinks of me as ‘solid’ when we embrace. 

The baby’s eyes and knuckles are simple gestures like swirls of black and white and little scrapes with a brush into red. I remember I wanted to paint like this so bad which is why maybe I love her so much. Looking at the way she paints hands reminds me.

One work highly perplexing—reminds me of paintings encountered on her website in 2017 with more sky and cloud. now with an obstruction and its inverted shadow. Like legs/fingers intertwined/overlapped, creating a small window. I’m trying to use the colors to rationalize the picture, the sweeps of color in all the works don’t necessarily serve to do so. They stilt the viewers like in a dream. Like in a memory.

To me, a compelling show has outlier work. This is quite literally day from night compared to the painting across from it. Both do evoke pensiveness.

A tiny human face this time. Legitimately the smallest I’ve ever seen her paint — just barely coming in from the bottom edge of the painting, again across from the one with the massive obstruction reminiscent of limbs. Red sky and bright sun juuuuust off center like a tiny bit lower and to the left. The frame of a body, very obviously disproportionate to the tiny human face creeping up from the bottom, who looks…dazed, has the presence of a mountain. The hole in which the soft sunset/rise light comes in between the shoulder and head resting on fist sort of mirrors the small opening of bright blue and white between mysterious forms of the not as straightforward painting. Nurturing is not as present here as with the other body present with child, maybe cause in that one I could only see boob and not face.

It’s totally crazy !!! Someone expresses, following up with “is it me or does this look 3D??” The minuscule corner of this painting all of a sudden commands the whole surface, and they are right— it absolutely does look 3D. I haven’t even noticed yet because I was staring forever at the mountain parent... I’m turning my attention to this spectacularly wild piece staticed with color and another big body  listening to their pillow.

Seeing these images smaller on my screen is what’s stratifying to the eyes. 

They are all still dreaming