Castor Gallery Downtown is pleased to announce Tantamount, an exhibition of new work from four artists who experiment with the materiality and process of using oil paint, from detailed photorealism to heavy abstract impasto. The exhibition will run from April 13 through May 14, 2017 with an opening reception on Thursday April 13 at 254 Broome St NY, NY from 6-8 PM.

Kim Dorland, Jeanette Hayes, Lucas Price, and Vanessa Prager are connected through their use of oil, however, each artist appropriates the material to develop their unique techniques through texture, color and subject matter. In Tantamount , Dorland combines digital with canvas, developing highly detailed and time consuming digital underpaintings before applying his extreme textures and deliberate brushstrokes to the surface; Hayes depicts canonical figures and narratives using a collage-like, but highly rendered aesthetic; Price uses oils to produce photorealistic, Renaissance-style still-life inspired portraits; and Prager is known for her extremely textured canvas’, applied using objects such as knives, toothbrushes and occasionally her hands to create abstracted forms.

Kim Dorland: (b. 1974 Wainwright, Alberta, Canada) Dorland pushes the boundaries of representation, exploring nostalgia, memory, identity, material and place, using deliberate brushstrokes in heavy impasto to build upon digitally produced underpainting. Employing his local Canadian landscape, history and the materiality of paint for inspiration, Dorland’s latest body of work focuses on intimate comforts and the domestic setting, a consequential reaction to the current social/ political climate. Dorland holds an MFA from York University in Toronto, and a BFA from the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design, in Vancouver. He has exhibited globally, including shows in Milan, New York, Chicago and Los Angeles. His work is featured in The Sander Collection (Berlin); Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal; Musée d’art contemporain de Montreal; Glenbow Museum (Calgary); Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, Art Gallery of Alberta and numerous private collections. Dorland currently lives and works in Vancouver.

Jeanette Hayes: (b. 1988) Hayes is a mixed-media artist best known for her collage-like aesthetic mixing high and popular culture. Renaissance and Baroque paintings are juxtaposed with internet iconography and anime characters. For this show, Hayes continues this highly rendered painting style, however takes inspiration from ancient Japanese scrolls and historical literature. Hayes layers her canvas first with acrylic before applying oils to create a smooth finish, using goldleaf to reference her interest in Renaissance technique. For this body of work, Hayes expands her drawing series, bringing her detailed fantasy-scapes to a large scale format.

Hayes has previously shown at Castor Gallery with solo show PARADISE??? She has shown locally at The Hole NYC, 55 Gansevoort, The Untitled Space, and internationally at XPO Gallery (Paris), Levy Delval (Brussels), Motelsallieri Gallery (Rome), among others. Hayes currently lives and works in New York.

Lucas Price: (b. 1980) Price is a multidisciplinary artist known for his combinations of photorealistic Renaissance-inspired portraits and religious iconography with text-based motifs. Utilizing layers of acrylic, oil and spray paint to produce highly rendered still-life work, Price’s work melds high and low, traditional and contemporary. He deconstructs the traditional still-life, examining the relationship between object and language.

Holding a Master’s Degree from the Royal Academy of Art, Price exhibited at London’s Tate Modern, Lazarides (London), Kodama Gallery (Japan), among others. He is also co-founder of postmodernist menswear label, A.Four Labs with Tokyo-based Kazuki Kuraishi.

Vanessa Prager: (b. 1984, Los Angeles, USA) Prager is known for her extreme, “gravity defying” textures and almost “furry” looking oil paintings of faces. Likening her painting technique to severe makeup application, the works look as though the faces have been bombarded with a thousand layers of foundation, mascara, powder, blush, lipstick, and so on. Prager’s paintings defy gravity with the amount of paint, hovering between sculpture and abstract impasto. Prager has shown locally at The Hole, Castor Gallery, in Los Angeles’ Richard Heller Gallery and in Paris at Galerie Xippas among others. Her work is represented in private collections around the US and England.