Isabel Croxatto Galería, in collaboration with Val Kilmer and HelMel Studios presents Somewhere Over the Rainbow by Victor Castillo. The online exhibition features a series of new work on canvas and paper in a personal tribute to the world of cinema.
Victor executes brilliant color and light, compounded with seemingly sweet but often twisted themes. These tenets set the mood in his paintings. Whether you like them or not, you just can’t stop looking at them. They move you. - Val Kilmer
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Val Kilmer and Helmel Studios present a short documentary about Victor Castillo
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TEXT BY SHARON MIZOTA
Castillo intervenes in a visual language that most of us know and understand all too well, which makes his work treacherously captivating. In a closed system of international media domination and saturation, what else can one do? He uses the vocabulary we have been given and dares to fashion a different narrative, one that turns a perverse mirror on our childhood dreams to reveal the deceit and emptiness at their core. — Sharon Mizota
Victor Castillo is out for revenge. His latest body of work, on view in HelMel's main gallery, takes Hollywood as its target, revisiting and warping iconic scenes from classic films through the lens of an equally iconic style - that of cartoons, from Disney's Silly Symphonies to Warner Bros.' Merrie Melodies and Looney Tunes. Like fellow Angeleno Paul McCarthy, Castillo excavates well-known entertainment imagery to undermine the fantasies of happiness and abundance it projects. But unlike McCarthy's more visceral aesthetic, Castillo turns the industry's own seductive tools against it, employing cheery colors, shiny, rounded forms, and those ever- smiling faces. For the Chilean-born artist, it is way of both claiming and getting back at the American pop culture that infused his childhood. By extension, it advances a pointed critique of American imperialism and the lies that support it.
Castillo's signature motif is a smooth, cartoon face with empty, hollowed out eyes and a juicy red sausage nose. The black, soulless eyes make his figures look as if their insides have been scooped out, leaving nothing but a zombie-like, hollow shell. The nose is a reference to Pinocchio's revealing protuberance, which grew every time he told a lie, but is also a phallic symbol, at once clown-like and salacious.
The artist developed this convention while living in Barcelona, where he observed how graffiti artists used a consistent "tag" to announce their presence. It was also in Spain that he was first exposed to the original works of Francisco Goya, the 18th and 19th century giant whose early career as a court painter gave way to trenchant political and anti-war imagery. Following Goya, Castillo developed his own blend of pop culture style and biting cultural commentary.
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Snow White, 2021
Acrylic On Canvas, 200 × 250 cmSnow White (2021) inverts a scene from Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), in which the titular princess bids farewell to the sweet, industrious dwarfs as they head off to the mines. Castillo has turned the dwarfs into impish red devils who are arriving, not leaving, drinks and guitar in hand, ready to party. The tweaked color palette, bordering on neon, is like sweetness on crack, perfectly echoing the way in which U.S. pop culture sugar- coats the government’s efforts to destabilize communities both abroad and at home.
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The exhibition features a large selection of preparatory drawings for iconic paintings (2011 - 2021)
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Víctor CastilloUntitled (Sketches) n° 02, 2011 - 2021Graphite on vellum paper21.6 x 27.9 cmSold
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Víctor CastilloSketch n°08 – Too Drunk to Fuck, 2015, 2015Graphite on vellum paper21.6 x 27.9 cmSold
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Víctor CastilloSketch n°10 – Superstition, 2011Graphite on vellum paper21.6 x 27.9 cmSold
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Víctor CastilloUntitled (Sketches) n° 17, 2011 - 2021Graphite on vellum paper21.6 x 27.9 cmSold
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Víctor CastilloSketch n°12 – You Are the Inspiration, 2011Graphite on vellum paper21.6 x 27.9 cmSold
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Víctor CastilloSketch n°16 – Broken Hearts, 2010Graphite on vellum paper21.6 x 27.9 cmSold
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Víctor CastilloUntitled (Sketches) n° 20, 2011 - 2021Graphite on vellum paper21.6 x 27.9 cmSold
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Víctor CastilloSketch n° 21 – A Lot of Fun, 2016Graphite on vellum paper21.6 x 27.9 cmSold
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Víctor CastilloUntitled (Sketches) n° 22, 2011 - 2021Graphite on vellum paper21.6 x 27.9 cmSold
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Víctor CastilloSketch n° 26 — Auch!, 2015Graphite on vellum paper27.9 x 21.6 cmSold
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Víctor CastilloSketch n°28 – No More Fantasies, 2012Graphite on vellum paper27.9 x 21.6 cmSold
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Víctor CastilloSketch n°29 – Let’s Have Fun, 2015Graphite on vellum paper27.9 x 21.6 cmSold
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VICTOR CASTILLO CHILEAN, B. 1973
Victor Castillo is an international artist living and working in Los Angeles. He was born in Santiago, Chile in 1973, where he was part of the experimental art collective Caja Negra, and he lived in Barcelona, Spain, where he dedicated and established himself as a painter, before moving to the United States in 2010. His prolific output is recorded in over 100 solo and group exhibitions to date in galleries and museums worldwide. Hollywood Dreams, a 6-minute animated short film by Loica and Barefoot Productions about Castillo's work, won the Gold Remi Award at the 52nd Annual WorldFest-Houston.