Justin Caguiat’s large-scale paintings on unstretched canvas or linen often spread out across entire walls; their imperfect edges usually contained by wooden frames. Within them, vividly coloured forms and shapes are layered in oil, gouache, chalk and distemper, where they coalesce into detailed, kaleidoscopic patterns. Now and then, patches of dark greys or black wash like planes of light across the surface. From this, figures, landscapes and otherworldly scenes begin to materialise, drifting in and out of legibility, taking time to unfold. Caguiat’s idiosyncratic style is informed by far reaching reference points, including science fiction literature, the baroque-folk hybrid aesthetic of early Filipino Catholic Santos, 60s psychedelia, les Nabis, Ukiyo-E, graphic art and the historical legacy of Manga. In scale and format, they can be read like murals and landscapes, and while not clearly depicting a narrative, they have a reverential or devotional atmosphere akin to a fresco. Though suggestive of Romanticism, Caguiat’s paintings are not illusionistic: they demonstrate rather than conceal their palimpsestic evolution. Through this constant dissolution and fusing of fragmented ideas, figures, places, the transposition of paint on a layered surface becomes much like the mechanics of memory.

Justin Caguiat (b. 1989, Tokyo) lives and works in California and New York. He has been involved in organising artist-run spaces and collectives and is a published poet having participated in readings and performances including in 2017 at the Kunsthalle Zürich, Switzerland. Recent solo exhibitions include Greene Naftali, New York (2022); The Warehouse, Dallas (2022); Taka Ishii Gallery, Tokyo (2021); Modern Art, London (2020); and 15 Orient, New York (2018). His work is in the collections of the Cleveland Museum of Art; Dallas Museum of Art; the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art; Hessel Museum of Art, Annandale-On-Hudson, New York; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; and Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, among others.