Victor Castillo paintings rock the house

If you haven?t heard or seen the paintings of Chilean artist Victor Castillo, who was born in 1973, it is time to get off your high horse and read the rest of this article, at the very least. Castillo was born in the nation?s capital, Santiago, where he grew up and attended art school. It is not clear if he graduated from art school, but what is known is that he was disappointed in the experience and then chose to join the independent art collective Caja Negra, where he started to make mixed media sculpture and video installations. He did this for several years before moving to Barcelona, Spain, in 2004, where like so many others before him he started to copy the masters, in particular Goya and shift to canvas artwork.

But simply copying doesn?t render an artist great, or improve his artwork. By definition new work has to be produced and the 20th century artwork of cartoons and comic books became an important aspect of his work.

Castillo notably mixes the timeless and classic style of the Spanish old world masters with animation ? a nearly Disney on Ice (the bad type of Ice) effect which renders the viewer slightly off-guard, but certainly full of attention and awe. To develop his style further Castillo then moved to Los Angeles, California, United States of America, in 2010, where he is currently based.

It is also in the U.S. where one can find the latest gallery showing of Castillo paintings at the noted Jonathan LeVine Gallery on 529 West 20th Street. The show is entitled The Jungle and draws inspiration from the artist?s view of the recent and varied images in the mass media of global violence and protests.

Castillo has said he feels that we are living in a time of flux: many institutions and power organs and groups have lost credibility, the consequence of which humans are now left in the jungle, with the ?law of the jungle? of brutal survival and a constant state of war against individuals and groups.

So while the images may look sweet and innocent, they are also allegorical visualizations of the current socio-economic world crisis. Some Castillo oil paintings, such as The Big Boss, features a boy burying money in a bucolic setting, symbolic of greed and what lies behind established appearances. Another noteworthy canvas artwork, Futuro Esplendor, references a John Heartfield photomontage of a hyena, but mutated to show the brutality of ambition for power when taken to the extreme. It would be wise to see the show and possibly snap up a painting as soon as possible. Castillo?s star is on the rise, and his works have been featured and bought by institutions such as the Museo D?Arte Contemporanea in Rome, Italy, the Chilean National Museum of Fine Arts in Santiago, Chile, the Museum of Modern Art in Chiloe, Chile and the Center for Contemporary Culture in Barcelona, Spain.

Source: http://leisure.ezinemark.com/victor-castillo-paintings-rock-the-house-7d34a511916e.html

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