Contemporary Art

Based in Chevy Chase, Maryland Enrique Castanon is a widely exhibited, critically acclaimed artist whose work is in many private and public collections in the United States, as well as in Europe, Asia, and South America. His work was praised in Artspeak magazine by the critic Claude Le Suer for "its almost terpsichorean sense of energy" as well as its "coloristic intensity" and "unfailing sense of form." Castanon moves effortlessly between figurative and abstract compositions, often combining the two modes of expression to achieve a unique stylistic synthesis. While continuing to work in the more traditional medium of oil on canvas, he has also embarked, over the last few years, on an exciting new series of mixed media works. Employing unique plastic-based materials such as prepared acetate, and polycarbonate in a highly original manner, the artist creates fluidly organic compositions remarkable for both their formal and allusive qualities.

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Often Castanon's new pictures suggest metaphysical states of being and cosmic spaces, with their luminous colors, flowing forms, and esoteric symbols arranged in intricate, richly layered configurations. His frequent use of metallic gold or silver pigments on translucent prepared acetate and polycarbonate grounds adds considerably to the ethereal qualities of light in his paintings, further enhancing their mysterious beauty, as though his images are bathed in otherworldly auras. Indeed, his images--an ornate oriental vase, a tiny ship within a large blue heart, a pair of sensual female nudes--often appear to orbit like planets within swirling linear networks that suggest a solar system of the artist's own invention. It is his unique ability to combine down-to-earth imagery with transcendental elements within an aesthetically harmonious format that makes Enrique Castanon a rare and rewarding painter whose intriguing neo-surreal compositions make a significant contribution to post-modern art.

Ed McCormack Editor, Gallery&Studio magazine New York City

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