Yvonne Jacquette's exhibition "From the Air" at Karma brings together her paintings and works on paper created between 1971 and 2016. After a cross-country flight in 1969, Jacquette began to explore aerial perspectives. Later, she observed urban and natural landscapes from airplanes, helicopters, and high-rise buildings. She did not aim to replicate these scenes exactly like maps or photographs. Instead, she combined direct observation, memory, and imagination. During this process, distance became both the subject of her work and a way for her to understand the world below.
"Airplane Window, Clouds and Hills" is a watercolor on paper created around 1976. The rounded rectangular format resembles an airplane window. The image is filled with clouds, sky, and distant mountains. The landscape extends to the edges of the painted area, and there is almost no visible unpainted space within the image, so the viewer does not feel a boundary between themselves and the scene. This composition creates a first-person point of view. The viewer seems to be sitting by the airplane window, looking out during the flight. This work shows how Jacquette connects physical distance with personal experience through the shape of the picture.
"N.Y. Aerial View from Helicopter (Looking East from Hudson Yards Area) II" depicts Manhattan during the day. Jacquette compresses many buildings into a wide canvas composed of brown, blue, orange, and yellow brushstrokes. She changes the perspective and scale, and did not depict the city as an accurate map. The city can still be recognized, but the repeated shapes also form an abstract pattern. As an international student, I recognized a tension between distance and belonging in these works. This exhibition shows that although an aerial perspective may seem detached, it can still contain the traces of daily life.
