When we first spoke to Cheyenne Julien back in 2018, she was an emerging painting star with a great perspective. She told us, "I’ve been fortunate so far; let’s hope I don’t fuck this up. I couldn’t even list all the things that I have learned so far. It’s been a lot, and I am still learning every day. I don’t have any goals I’d like to share at the moment." Guess what? She didn't fuck this up. And now, to kick off 2025, she is showing 41 Floors at Chapter NY.
Through portraits, landscapes and still lifes, Julien’s practice centers around architectural spaces, revealing the power of built environments to dictate racial perception. The artist’s most recent body of work draws inspiration from famed architect Paul Rudolph and his richly imaginative drawings that offer an idealistic vision of architecture’s potential to positively impact and guide urban renewal. In the early 1970s Rudolph designed Tracey Towers in the Bronx, the only subsidized housing project of his career. An apartment within one of these two Brutalist skyscrapers later became Julien’s childhood home. The striking presence of Tracey Towers remain both a predominant part of the Bronx skyline and a reoccurring subject in Julien’s work.
For her exhibition at Chapter, Julien focuses on the outdoor spaces in and around Tracey Towers that were part of Rudolph’s original vision to foster community engagement within the building complex. Many of these courtyards and gardens were never realized in the final construction, but Julien copied and redrew elements of the architect’s drawings to channel his specific viewpoint, merging his perspective with her own gestures and lived experience. In one painting a reclining female figure lies over subway cars in the adjacent trainyard, originally intended to become a platform for townhomes and recreational facilities. Julien adopts Rudolph’s creative spirit in her own work, envisioning a limitless and futuristic architecture; but unlike Rudolph, Julien reveals the darker realities learned from living within one of these visionary projects ultimately riddled with inefficiencies and oppressive features.
Julien’s resulting paintings hold greater depth than her earlier works, with more expansive and layered spaces. Contrasting artificial and natural light sources emphasize the complexity of these stacked urban environments. Stark beams of light cast from glowing windows and distant headlights penetrate Julien’s compositions, either suggesting a possible divine presence or invoking the paranoia of a surveilled state of being. Julien emphasizes the interdependency of bodies and these contexts by merging building materials such as brick, metal, and concrete with her imagined figurative subjects. Although directly referencing Tracey Towers, Julien’s paintings dislocate the viewer from identifiable space and time, instead favoring a world in which body and architecture become inextricably intertwined.
