James Castle Drawings: Vision and Touch, comprised of the artist’s classic soot drawings on found papers, marks Knoedler’s fourth exhibition devoted to the work of Castle (the first in 2000–01), each of which has been presented in cooperation with J Crist Gallery and The James Castle Collection, ... Read more
James Castle Drawings: Vision and Touch, comprised of the artist’s classic soot drawings on found papers, marks Knoedler’s fourth exhibition devoted to the work of Castle (the first in 2000–01), each of which has been presented in cooperation with J Crist Gallery and The James Castle Collection, LLC. The artworks in this exhibition have been selected directly from the artist’s estate, and have never been previously shown. Knoedler & Company, the first gallery in New York to exhibit the work of James Castle, is the exclusive New York representative of Castle’s work.
Castle’s beautifully rendered subjects are the deceptively simple domestic settings of his rural Idaho home. Without hearing or speech, his visual curiosity was intensely focused, and his imagination extremely rich, and it is these internal resources that enabled him to reorganize his representations of his world, working with soot-based homemade inks, on supports salvaged from the family-run post office and general store—including advertising matter, envelopes, and matchboxes.
Margit Rowell writes in her catalogue essay, unlike many “outsider” artists, Castle did not draw only for himself, but in order to share (and communicate) with others. One can imagine that for someone whose sensory relation to the world was visual and tactile, and whose responses, in the absence of a verbal language, were intensely intuitive and emotional, transcribing his private reality for himself and others was crucial for establishing an identity.
The particular creative alchemy of Castle’s art has culminated in a body of work of extraordinary richness and diversity. The drawings in this exhibition—mostly interior and exterior views—embody the central aspect of James Castle’s artistic endeavor. Indeed draughtsmanship underlies all aspects of his work, which encompasses constructions, color pulp drawings, text-based works, patterned abstractions, and books.
He worked very close to the paper, in a virtually myopic mode—a manner of isolating, possessing, and protecting the subjective “here” from the objective “elsewhere.” It is tempting to see his drawings as a symbolic representation—combining the visceral and the organic—of the symbiotic relation of the newly born child with the world in his immediate grasp. Following this line of thought, the drawings are that world, which he strives to keep within his vision and touch.
— Margit Rowell
