JavaScript is required

Cart (0)

We use cookies and other technologies to personalize your experience and collect analytics.

Privacy policy

Justin Caguiat

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 Dallas Museum of Art; the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art; Hessel Museum of Art, Annandale-On-Hudson, New York; and Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, among others.

Press
Biography
Kleptopharmacophagy, 2023
Kaleidoscopic Possibility with the Feeling of Homelessness, 2023
oil, gouache, chalk on linen, 237.2 x 385.6 cm, 93 3/8 x 151 3/4 in
1/3
Hummingbird Symbol, 2023
oil and gouache on linen, 232.8 x 224.8 cm, 91 5/8 x 88 1/2 in
1/3
Facing Accidents Maddening Cloud, 2023
oil, chalk on linen, 229.4 x 348.3 cm, 90 1/4 x 137 1/8 in
1/3
Dreampop, 2023
oil, gouache, chalk on linen, 239.6 x 344.2 cm, 94 3/8 x 135 1/2 in
1/3
All Flesh is Grass, and all its Trust Like the Flowers of the Field, 2023
oil and gouache on linen, artist frame, 217.2 x 292.4 cm, 85 1/2 x 115 1/8 in
1/3
Daisyworld, 2022
oil and gouache on linen, artist frame, 320 x 406.4 cm, 126 x 160 in
1/3
Pissing in the Stars, 2022
oil and gouache on linen, 248.3 x 328.3 cm, 97 3/4 x 129 1/4 in
1/3
California, 2021
oil and casein on linen, 335 x 427 cm, 131 7/8 x 168 1/8 in
1/3
Mercury Station, 2021
distemper, oil, on linen in walnut frame, 224.8 x 300.4 cm, 88 1/2 x 118 1/4 in
1/3
Branches Flower Windows, 2020
oil, gouache and pencil on canvas, 200.5 x 144 cm, 79 x 56 3/4 in
1/3
Anal staircase of the eye reflected in its fingernail, 2019
oil on linen, 221.8 x 250.6 cm, 87 3/8 x 98 5/8 in
1/3
The saint is never busy, 2019
oil on linen, 222.5 x 291.5 cm, 87 5/8 x 114 3/4 in
1/3
The Idiot, 2023 (detail)
Thousand year old laughter, 2019

Press

Ocula1 October 2023
Spike22 October 2022
Artnet4 January 2022
Artnet21 October 2021
Ocula1 October 2021
Vulture17 December 2018
Ocula25 June 2020
Frieze10 January 2020
Whitewall11 December 2018

Biography

Justin Caguiat

Born in Tokyo, Japan, 1989 Lives and works in New York, NY, USA and Oakland, CA, USA

Solo Exhibitions

2024
Triple SolitaireCenter for the Arts, Wesleyan University, Middletown, CT, USA
2023
Dreampop
Modern Art, London
2022
Carnival
Greene Naftali, New York, NY, USA
The FoolThe Warehouse, Dallas, TX, USA
2021
Doll
Taka Ishii Gallery, Tokyo, Japan
2020
Permutation City 1999
Modern Art, London
2018
God is a Concept from a Story Come to Life
15 Orient, Brooklyn, NY, USA

Group Exhibitions

2024
Spangled Mind
Greene Naftali, New York, NY, USA
The Toys of Peace
Taka Ishii Gallery, Tokyo, Japan
Magicians less prone to mental disorders than other artists, finds research
Altman Siegel, San Francisco, CA, USA
Leaps of FaithZ33, Hasselt, Belgium
2023
Suncrush
Greene Naftali, New York, NY, USA
The Moth and The Thunderclap
Modern Art, London
2021
Modern Art
London
2020
This Corrosion
Modern Art, London
Condo London: Justin Caguiat and Danica Barboza
Lomex, New York hosted by Arcadia Missa, London
2019
Pig Latin in Quicksand
Clima, Milan, Italy
The Opposing Shore
Lomex, New York, NY, USA
2018
Devotion....
Kimberly-Klark, New York, NY, USA
2017
Jade is to bathtub as soap is to bell
The Sunroom, Richmond, VI, USA
CCLB Anthology
The Loon, Toronto, Canada
If the Kids
Zabriskie Point, Geneva, Switzerland
Quintessa Matranga, Justin Caguiat, Jessica Friedman, Rafael Delacruz, Selena Matranga
Shimizu Brand, Long Island City, NY, USA
A Stolen Painting Found by a Tree
Rope, Baltimore, MD, USA

Performances

2018
Three Songs
Mother Culture, Los Angeles, CA, USA
Putting Itself Together
Chicken Coop Contemporary, Portland, OR, USA
The Celebration, w/ Aurelia Guo
Ben's Books, New York, NY, USA
2017
The Turtle, 'Löwenbräu lebt'Kunsthalle Zürich, Switzerland
HOLONS
Codette, New York, NY, USA

Selected Collections

Blenheim Art Foundation
Woodstock
Dallas Museum of Art
Dallas, TX, USA
Hammer Museum
Los Angeles, CA, USA
Hessel Museum of Art
Annandale-On-Hudson, NY, USA
Museum of Contemporary Art
Chicago, IL, USA
Museum of Contemporary Art
Los Angeles, CA, USA
SFMOMA
San Francisco, CA, USA