calendario eventi  :: 

X

7/9/2007

Carolyn Castano

Kontainer Gallery, Los Angeles

Mixed-media Paintings

Kontainer Gallery is pleased to announce the second solo exhibition of Los Angeles artist Carolyn Castaño, New Work, September 8- October 6, 2007. The show will feature mixed-media paintings by the artist.

In this new series, Castaño explores the hybrid nature of Los Angeles through mixed-media paintings that re-mix the city’s colors, patterns, and textures through paintings that employ both the figurative and the abstract.
For Castaño, Los Angeles is a city of contrasts, where the confluence of cultures is reflected in the designs and patterns of the marketplace. Stripes, polka dots, and flowers mix readily with commercial textiles, graphic beauty salon illustrations, and mercado banners. These can be found in the exterior facades of LA’s mini-malls, botanicas, Moorish inspired buildings and modernist office towers. Color plays a major role as well, where fluorescent pinks and neon purples might reflect that of a balloon flying by or design on a pretty girl’s dress. The patterns are at once high fashion (Pucci, Lacoste, Etro) and street fashion, (Billionaire Boys Club, Ice Cream, and Forever 21). Inspired in part by the advertising seen outside of beauty salons and storefronts, which use a hand- painted aesthetic to advertise services, these paintings incorporate portraits of friends and people Carolyn meets. They adopt a similar graphic style, but these supplant those storefront images by incorporating personalized portraits taken of everyday youth. Castaño is interested in these youth, because they themselves represent the ever-evolving transformation of the city.

Carolyn was born in Los Angeles to parents from Colombia and has lived on and off in LA’s Historic Filipino-town. She obtained her B.F.A. in painting from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1995 and her M.F.A. from UCLA, School of Art and Architecture in 2001.

Her work will be featured in the upcoming exhibition at LACMA, Phantom Sightings: Art After the Chicano Movement, scheduled to open April 2008. Exhibited widely in venues through-out the United States, Carolyn has shown her work in Beastly at Lombard-Freid Fine Arts, New York, Liquid Los Angeles: Contemporary Watercolor Painting in Los Angeles at the Pasadena Museum of California Art, International Paper, an exhibition of drawings at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, Semi-Precious, The Public Art Fund, New York, Three Great Walls and Bay Area Now at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, and New Langton in San Francisco. European venues include LA Now: Emerging Artists, Galerie Dominique Fiat, Paris and Honey-Traps at 38 Langham Street, London, Castano’s work is included in the collections of Deutche Bank, Eileen Norton Collection, Santa Monica, Sam& Shanit Schwartz, JP Morgan Chase, Progressive Foundation, and Michael Lynne, New Line Cinema, and the Di Rosa Preserve in Napa Valley.

Opening Reception: Saturday, September 8th, 6:00- 9:00 PM

Kontainer Gallery
944 Chung King Road, Los Angeles, CA 90012

stampa

permanent link