Victor Castillo was born in Santiago, Chile. He currently lives and works in Los Angeles, California. From 2004 to 2010, Castillo lived in Barcelona, Spain, where he established his painting style with references to vintage comics and cartoons. Influenced by seeing the work of Spanish old world masters, Goya in particular, he soon adopted aspects of classical painting in his work. Born in '73 is his fourth landmark exhibition in Los Angeles. The title is a self-reflective reference to the artist's generation as well as to a historic coincidence.
"I was born in an experiment," Castillo says about the military dictatorship that was established in Chile in 1973 following the neoliberal model of Chicago school economists. The feelings of fear and impotence provoked by a brutal political and social system are humorously evoked in Castillo's new series. Calling to mind the coup d'état in his country and then other countries in Latin America and the world, Castillo suggests that global takeovers of power continue. The exhibition features new paintings on canvas and works on paper, including one of Castillo's biggest and brightest canvases to date, The Big Dream, about the illusion of money, painted in a vibrant loose and gestural style adapted from his murals. Castillo likes to tell stories in his paintings, and he continues to appropriate the narrative logic of children's tales and vintage aesthetics to present us with allegories about human nature. —Ariadna Zierold
Born in '73 is on view at KP Projects in Los Angeles.
