British artist Cato makes his New York City debut with “Love Song” at Eric Firestone Gallery, a vibrant exhibition capturing the kinetic energy of urban life and the nuanced relationships between people. This inaugural show at the gallery’s 40 Great Jones Street location introduces Cato’s unique artistic voice, one that resonates with the rhythms of city life, much like the iconic “New York, New York song” evokes the spirit of the metropolis. Cato’s work, while visual, shares a similar pulse and emotional depth found in music about the city, translating feelings into painted and collaged canvases.
Alt text: Cato’s mixed media artwork, featuring a close-up of faces with exaggerated features and hands, set against a backdrop of geometric shapes and patterns in his “Love Song” exhibition.
Born in Brighton, England in 1999, Cato is a self-taught multi-media artist whose work pulsates with the dynamism of cityscapes, the richness of Black culture, and the intricate connections between individuals – be they musicians, lovers, or friends. Like a musician sampling diverse sounds to create a new track, Cato draws from a vast archive of visual sources, including historical documents, art history, personal polaroids, and street photography. His process often begins with polaroids, seeking out specific lighting that often results in a distinctive flash on the faces of his subjects. These images, seemingly like collaged photographs initially, are meticulously painted freehand using an airbrush, showcasing his remarkable technical skill.
The paintings featured in “Love Song” were created during an intensive month-long studio residency hosted by the gallery, marking Cato’s first experience living and working in New York City. This immersion in the city allowed Cato to delve into resources like the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, enriching his understanding and inspiration. Deeply influenced by the Harlem Renaissance and citing Romare Bearden as a key artistic touchstone, New York provided a fertile ground for Cato to explore these historical roots in greater depth, much like a musician might seek out the birthplace of a genre to understand its soul.
Alt text: Detailed view of Cato’s painting technique, highlighting the smooth gradients and photorealistic qualities achieved with airbrushing, characteristic of his “Love Song” series.
A striking element of Cato’s paintings is the exaggerated scale of heads and hands. Facial expressions are central to his narratives, driving the emotional content and shaping his thematic explorations. Cato is fascinated by fleeting glimpses of expressions, how they spark curiosity and foster recognition and empathy between viewers and subjects. Recognizing the expressiveness of hands in communication, he renders them larger-than-life, emphasizing their role in human interaction. His compositions begin by referencing source images, focusing on painting faces with airbrush, a technique he adopted while in Mexico City, appreciating its capacity to create light and a vintage, photographic aesthetic. After completing the heads and hands, Cato cuts out these silhouettes and collages them onto a canvas, adding geometric shapes cut from painted canvas to suggest interior spaces or bustling street scenes, building up layers of meaning and visual texture.
The deliberate contrast between the photorealistic rendering of heads and hands and the looser, geometric styles in the rest of the painting is a defining characteristic of his work. For these broader areas, he employs brushes and paint rollers, creating forms reminiscent of Cubist art, particularly Picasso’s black and white period and his 1921 painting Three Musicians. This stylistic duality, this “style shifting,” injects a peculiar tension into Cato’s paintings, a strangeness that coexists with moments of profound recognition, creating a visual rhythm that echoes the complex emotional landscape of a “Newyork New York Song”—simultaneously familiar and surprising.
Alt text: Artwork by Cato demonstrating cubist influences through geometric forms and fragmented perspectives, showcasing his stylistic fusion in the “Love Song” exhibition.
Cato’s personal history deeply informs his artistic perspective. His father, a historian of Jamaican descent, provides a cultural legacy that shapes both Cato’s subject matter and source materials, with many images sourced from his father’s books. One recent painting depicts a woman holding a book about Emory Douglas, the Black Panther Party’s artist. With his mother and sisters also artists, creativity is clearly woven into his familial fabric.
Growing up in Brighton, Cato was inspired by the DIY ethos prevalent among local musicians and artists. Alongside art, science, particularly Sci-fi, has been a significant interest, influencing some of his visual depictions. More recently, his paintings reflect the diverse and dynamic street culture of Peckham in South East London, where he currently resides, showcasing his continuous engagement with the energy of urban environments.
His latest paintings in “Love Song” delve into the subtle dramas and relationships between people. Cato allows the interaction between figures’ faces to guide the composition’s development. While earlier works were often situated in the 1930s, these new paintings advance to the 1950s. He is also exploring a shift from a predominantly grayscale palette to color, drawing a parallel to the transition from black and white to color television. The lyrics of Gil Scott Heron serve as another source of inspiration, adding a layer of musicality to his visual narratives. Symbolic objects like clocks appear in several works, evoking memento mori themes, adding depth and contemplation.
Cato’s artistic journey includes participation in The Cabin La Brea Studio Residency in Los Angeles, followed by a solo exhibition, and exhibitions at the Royal Academy of Arts and the Hive Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing. In 2023, he released his EP ‘The Wind That Was Blown,’ produced by Rhythm Section International, further highlighting his multi-faceted creativity. Cato’s work is also part of The Dean Collection, recognizing his growing prominence in the contemporary art world.
“Cato: Love Song” is presented in conjunction with “Lauren dela Roche: No Man’s Land” at Eric Firestone Gallery, 40 Great Jones Street, offering a dual exhibition experience that invites viewers to explore diverse artistic expressions within the vibrant New York art scene. Just as a “newyork new york song” captures the city’s soundscape, Cato’s “Love Song” exhibition visually encapsulates its vibrant human energy, offering a compelling artistic rhythm for viewers to experience.
