As the collective seasonal depression currently troubling Londoners continues to display no signs of wavering - a state with which I'm sure New Yorkers are all too familiar - the art world is resolute that the show must go on. Despite the weather, the openings have been opening like it's nobody's business, including the opening of London-based painter Cato's first UK solo show. On a particularly busy Wednesday on the gallery circuit, Cato opened his show SEEN! at Cooke Latham Gallery in Battersea. Less than an hour before its doors opened, I gave the painter a call as the first of his guests were beginning to trickle into the gallery.
We discussed how Cato creates his large scale works, drawing from a spunky set of references, mediums, and materials in order to construct his candid paintings centring uncle-like figures, a legible character across the black diaspora, engaging in the cultural exchange of music and dominoes. Beyond this particular show, his paintings depict men boxing and chilling in barber shops, and domestic scenes reminiscent of Carrie Mae Weems' photography. Cato is captivated by both his subjects and the spaces they inhabit, he tells me, as we speak about charming elders, returning to Jamaica, and the sentimentality of his humble materials and methods.
