Canyon Castator “Pissing Match”

Postmasters Gallery

[Image: Canyon Castator "SOS" (2017) Oil on canvas. 96 x 72 in.]

This event has ended.

“Debauchery is perhaps an act of despair in the face of infinity.”

–Edmond de Goncourt, Pages from the Goncourt Journals

Postmasters will begin the new year with Canyon Castator’s debut solo show, Pissing Match. Both galleries are dedicated to the exhibition.

Castator’s large-scale oil paintings bring us into a twisted version of today’s social reality. Each is a gruesome, cartoon-like collage with graphically distorted figures, packed into vivid scenes of debauchery. By heightening what is already grotesque and salacious about party culture, substance abuse, harassment, and violence override the casual vice. The more disturbing the scenario, the more macabre its actors. This is a world of extremes, from the overloaded content to the work’s strong narrative impulse to the bright and bold aesthetic that Castator never shies from.

Digital processes give the work its copy-paste quality. Preparatory drawings are executed on an iPad, where compositional elements can be readily resized, moved, deleted, or restored. Imagery is often culled from personal or found photos. Exuberant patterns and a melange of textures, whether they are superflat or perspectivally perfect, commingle with humor and ease.

Canyon Castator (b. 1989) is a Los Angeles-based painter. In 2013, he was invited to be a resident at the Kunstakademie in Düsseldorf, where he studied with Tal R. He is originally from Boulder, Colorado.