"Pissing Match" at Postmasters

His pop-inspired paintings offer a bizarre blend of classically finessed fine art skills and a disturbingly cerebral cartoon quality, incorporating refrences from modern media, politics and an amalgamation of personal experiences. Throughout his career, Castator's triumph has truly been in the thoughtful way he has translated what is topical, warping whatever the current social climate may be, with weird and artful articulation.

When commenting on cultural phenomena or creating political work, it is often overt if an artist is approaching the subject with satire, or with sobering seriousness. Canyon's work is confounding, to that point. Pissing Match presents the "house party"— his paintings depicting "debauchery", in various scenes filled with wild vices, substance abuse, violence, harassment— the concept of such a casual get-together completed by Canyon's brash, and blatantly uncensored characters.

Putting together Pissing Match— a deeply uncomfortable, depressing, angering, droll, and amusing exhibition— that takes someone confusingly cool. So office sat down to chat with Canyon about his first show in NYC, olives, and skating accidents.

Your work is pretty steeped in social commentary, and there are consistently cultural references that are overall pretty current. How do you think- or I guess, do you think- that your work is able to transcend the appreciation of a younger generation, and be something that speaks to those who are older, or just be understood by anyone outside of a modernized society?

The issues that exist now, that I am referencing or that are feeding into my paintings, aren't new. There is nothing new about oppression, social injustice and herd mentality. So while I'm using new visual languages and maybe more modern, cartoon-like figures, there's an underlying theme that can be universally understood.

Do you feel like your work has a sense of humor? Have you always interpreted it the same way? ...I feel like personally I might have gone through phases where I would find it funny, and also at times it would probably be super depressing for me to see those scenes. Do you feel like the scenes are self-referential or more of a commentary on something you have observed in society?

I use humor as a way to approach or convey a very serious message and quite frankly, make it easier to look at, make it tolerable. The more serious the issue, the more cartoon-y I make the characters involved. I like to use the Blitz Wolf cartoon by Tex Avery as an example. It's propaganda, it's comedy but essentially it's taking something very dark and unbelievably horrific and making it relatable and consumable by any audience. That's what I am trying to do with these scenes that are a combination of personal experiences and societal observations. It's impossible not to include myself. I'm holding up a wonky mirror to what's happening in the world and sometimes of glimpse of myself makes it in.

How has your work changed since you began your practice? Has LA effected that?

Yes, absolutely. It has constantly been changing. The biggest change for me is since moving to Los Angeles, I'm able to work at a larger size and now create more complex scenes that I could have never approached in my tiny Bushwick studio.

What do you do in the studio while working to create an environment that you are inspired by? Music, people, technology, furniture, I don’t know, really anything.

I have mini fridge full of beer, olives and canned fish and a giant bluetooth speaker from Costco.

What is something outside of fine art that you find inspiration from?

Skateboarding.

Do you watch cartoons?

I fall asleep watching cartoons every single night. I consider South Park high art.

Do you read the news?

I am a reader and supporter of the Intercept.

Also— what does this mean, like seriously. It’s from a press release about you and personally I don’t think this sentence is explanatory enough?

"Castator's foray into painting started after he broke his ankle while skateboarding in high school. Instead of attending art school, he moved to New York City, where he taught himself oil painting."

Haha that's an odd sentence. What it is trying to explain is that I was sponsored, on a team and was planning on pursuing skateboarding full on. Then I broke my ankle and couldn't skate for a long period of time in my senior year of high school and that's when I started painting. I always drew but I don't think I would have ever started painting if I hadn't had all that time not skateboarding. After really bad advice from college councilors who told me to pursue illustration because I wasn't "going to be the next Picasso" I decided to bail on art school and move to New York. I wish I had taken that councilor's name down, would have invited him to the show.

Pissing Match will be on view at Postmasters Gallery through February 10th.
Images courtesy of Postmasters Gallery.

Art

Luna Luna: Surrealist Spectacle Lands in New York

November 21, 2024

In the 1980s, André Heller, an Austrian artist, singer-songwriter, and former actor, was looking for a new place to showcase his art. He had already taken to gardens, creating a colorful, surrealistic character using 40,000 flowers, and to the skies, organizing a 'fire theatre,' which involved an over-the-top fireworks show complete with steel-frame sculptures set on fire. But he had never tried out a fair.

So began "Luna Luna." Created as the world's first art carnival, "Luna Luna" combined the spectacular with the absurd, showcasing original rides and attractions from rising and already-at-the-top artists in Hamburg. Nearly forty years since its debut, followed by foiled plans for a worldwide tour, breached contracts, and 44 storage containers, the art fair has finally returned, calling New York home after re-debuting last year in Los Angeles.

By Hailey Johnson
Photography by Delvin Claro and Sabrina Sarnitz, courtesy of Luna Luna LLC

On a recent evening in Hudson Yards, a small carousel featured characters in quirky, Twister-like poses and an outstretched dog with seven legs. (Almost a century old, the rides are no longer rideable.) Goofy wooden sculptures were elevated in another corner, some of them cross-eyed or with a horn for a nose. A geodesic dome glowed, with Gregorian chants hovering somewhere above it.

"It's an art experience like no other," Michael Goldberg, Chief Experience Officer of Luna Luna, said recently. "People get to see artists do things they've never done before," he added.

Goldberg, founder of Something Special Studios, a creative agency behind many Nike campaigns, was determined to resurrect “Luna Luna” after reading about it online in 2019. Goldberg shopped for investors, eventually teaming up with DreamCrew, a media company co-owned by the rapper Drake. (Details on the company's investment remain vague; sources have reported that DreamCrew spent over "100 million dollars.") In 2022, an intensive restoration process began, with a team of artists reviving many of the original works, which had remained in boxes in a Texas warehouse for over thirty years. Several had been in pieces. (The team reportedly had to rebuild each work "bolt by bolt.")

That night, at the Shed, fourteen out of the original thirty-five works were on display, including the small carousel (Keith Haring), the goofy sculptures (Kenny Scharf), the neon dome (Salvador Dali), and a towering Ferris wheel decorated in drawings of stick figures, upside crowns, and references to Jim Crow (Basquiat). Missing works are in a "constant state of restoration," Goldberg said. Meanwhile, new attractions are joining the line-up. For the New York show, the Puerto Rican duo Poncilí Creación was commissioned to create "PonciliLand," a blink-and-you-miss-it section where guests "can create fantastical characters out of custom building blocks." Poncili also developed floating characters, inspired by performers who circulated the original “Luna Luna” fairgrounds in 1987. Known as "Lovers," the two characters, large and dreamlike, teetered to one side, mumbling the kind of nervous groans one does before a fall. (They never ended up falling.)

I asked Goldberg if, given that today's culture doesn't quite look or feel the same way as it did in 1987, there was any hesitation in showing some of the original works. On a back wall, a tribute featured Manfred Diex's "Palace of the Wind," a show featuring performers who fart into a microphone; on another, two ornate pedestals held sculptures of spiral poop.

"I don't see any reason why we wouldn't show any of these works," he said. "A lot of the time, art is exclusive and uninviting. The big difference between “Luna Luna” and other art experiences is that it has many sides to it, and things that have a bit of humor and playful energy. "As for "Palace of the Winds,” the decision to keep it was simple: farting is universal. He went on: "The “Crap Chancellery" is, conceptually, one of the most important works in “Luna Luna.” Daniel Spoerri's dad was killed in the Holocaust, and the work was inspired by Albert Speer, who was Hitler's architect. He took the facade of what was meant to be a Nazi shrine and turned it into the facade of a bathroom with two steaming statues of shit standing on the outside. These works are extremely important and are things that we would definitely want to honor and draw attention to."

As “Luna Luna” further develops, the show will likely change. "It will continue to evolve as we go to different cities in response to the spaces that we pop up into and in collaboration with the local city," Goldberg said." With it, there will be new characters and new stories to tell. One aspect that won't change, though, as Goldberg assured, is a long-held sentiment about a potential partnership. At one point, early on during the original “Luna Luna” era, McDonald's wanted to buy into it. Heller said no, adding that he "didn't want it to feel like Disneyland." Goldberg agreed. Nonetheless, as I watched Kenny Scharf's dizzying swing ride go around for what felt like the hundredth time, with the cartoon characters decorated on it blurring together (one with a villain's grin, another morphed into a martini glass), I couldn't help but feel like maybe I was at Disneyland, only not as robbed, but just as entertained and exhausted by its rides and fantastical characters, and wanting to go again.

Luna Luna, Hamburg, Germany, 1987.

Art

Pamela Sneed’s Speaking Tongue opens at Dashwood Projects

November 15, 2024

Pamela Sneed’s latest exhibition, Speaking Tongue, will be on view at Dashwood Projects from November 20 to December 21. The show features twenty watercolor and ink paintings inspired by her recent trip to Kenya, where she was deeply moved by the elegance of giraffes, the landscapes, and the energy of Nairobi.

Blending her background as a poet and visual artist, Sneed’s work reflects on themes of identity, nature, and connection. Her paintings capture the beauty and spirit of the animals she encountered, alongside reflections on her own experiences as part of the African diaspora.

This exhibition marks Sneed’s first solo show with Dashwood Projects and will be accompanied by a new book, also titled Speaking Tongue, to be released in December.

By Enzo Holdt
Artworks by Pamela Sneed

Art

Tiebreaker - Alvin Armstrong

November 15, 2024

There is a moment of silence right before the play. Just before the racket strikes the ball as it hangs weightless in the air, breathless and charged. It’s the fleeting yet decisive instant that can alter the course of the match, determining who wins and who loses.

Alvin Armstrong depicts this crucial moment in his new exhibition Tiebreaker, symbolizing the risks and rewards of competition. It’s an implication of something else at stake, where athletes push not only their bodies, but their spirits to the absolute limit.

The dynamic figures embody the strength, grace, and agility juxtaposed by the vibrant color palette evoking not just the joy of competition but the charged energy of the court.

Tiebreaker is opening Thursday, November 16th at Anna Zorina Gallery.