Victor Castillo: Strange Fruit

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Victor Castillo, 'The Infinite Complexities of Christmas', 2010. Acrylic on canvas, 24 x 24 inches. Photo: Courtesy Merry Karnowsky Gallery.

LOS ANGELES, CA.- Merry Karnowsky Gallery presents Victor Castillo: Strange Fruit and Miss Van: She-Wolves. The two Barcelona-based artists unfold their unique personal perspectives on subjects like seduction, temptation, innocence, desire, and cruelty. A moral allegorist, Chilean artist Victor Castillo pairs classical painting with cartoon-like characters. He paints children in dark secret gardens, where they innocently reenact violent media images with brutality and indifference. Most of the characters in Castillo’s paintings have phallic, hot-dog shaped noses, humorously suggesting Pinocchio. He also makes reference to contemporary culture, human error and vices, politics, and the loss of values in the increasing consumption of modern life, which he sees as an insatiable desire that blinds us. Castillo’s work has shown in Spain, Chile, Cuba, Argentina, Brazil, Japan, Germany, the United States, Canada, Belgium and Taiwan, and has been featured in Juxtapoz and Hi-Fructose magazines.