• Overview
    View works. Douglas Cantor. Photography by Chloé Polkinghorne.
    Douglas Cantor. Photography by Chloé Polkinghorne.
    View works
    On the surface, Cantor's paintings often depict his most immediate context, with recurring motifs, familiar imagery, personal objects, daily life, close relationships and personal desires through which Cantor explores his painting process and where the act of painting is the driving force behind the decisions made.

    Douglas Cantor, born in Colombia, lives and works in London, UK. Cantor’s paintings are an exploration of diaspora identity and the transfiguration of culture through the experience of the immigrant, specifically to Cantor, his experience as a Latino immigrant to the UK. His work is an attempt to try to come to terms with the ways his culture and identity have mutated through his experience of immigration. What it means to not belong here or there, fragmented lives and the discrepancies between the different realities of contrasting places, a specific set of circumstances and experiences all too familiar to the immigrant that seem to simultaneously strengthen and dilute what it means to him to be from somewhere else, somewhere past.

     

    As a result, Cantor's paintings portray what is left, what is gone, and what has changed meaning. They show a version of Latin American culture that is specific to his reality and personality and act as a vehicle to both records as well as project the constant development of life. They remain romantic and idealized, wishful and hopeful. They preserve the dreamings of the immigrant in what may be a collective cultural version of the American dream, but in this case, his own.

     

    On the surface, Cantor's paintings often depict his most immediate context, with recurring motifs, familiar imagery, personal objects, daily life, close relationships and personal desires through which Cantor explores his painting process and where the act of painting is the driving force behind the decisions made. Beneath this lies a much more personal, emotional, and private aspect of Cantor's works. An assortment of personal jokes that are perhaps even more prevalent in the titles, which are very carefully thought out, often coming from Cantor’s own writing. Here the paintings exist as a means to deal with life, a personal exploration, a depiction and conciliation of his feelings of segregation, his relationships, his experiences, realities and traumas.

  • Works
  • Biography
    View works. Douglas Cantor. Photography by Chloé Polkinghorne.
    Douglas Cantor. Photography by Chloé Polkinghorne.
    View works

     

    EDUCATION

     

    2013–2015      

    BA (Hons) Camberwell College of Arts, University of the Arts London, UK

     

    2012                

    Foundation Diploma in Art and Design, CCW Progression Center, University of the Arts London, UK

     

     

     

    SOLO EXHIBITIONS

     

    2021                

    • Guts Gallery, London, UK, “Always Late to The Party”
    • Liliya Art Gallery, London, UK, “Cry, Cowboy, Cry”
    • Guts Gallery, London, UK, “Horses and Nudies”

     

     

     

    SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS

     

    2024               

    • Love waxes cold, London, UK, “RUNNY NOSE”
    • Enari Gallery, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, “Meet the Cantors”

     

    2023               

    • Union Gallery, London, UK, “UNI[2]ON”
    • Wolfgang Gallery, Atlanta, USA, “The Front Room”

     

    2022               

    • Enari Gallery, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, “In Motion”
    • Eve Liebe Gallery, London, UK, “En Vivo Y A Todo Color”

     

    2021                

    • NBB Gallery, Berlin, Germany, duo show “Achy Breaky Heart”           
    • Guts Gallery, London, UK, “Reality Check”
    • Guts Gallery, London, UK, “A New Art World”
    • Guts Gallery at Sadie Coles HQ, London, UK, “Introducing”
    • Union Gallery, London, UK, “Holding Hands”
    • Guts Gallery, London, UK, “When The Shit Hits the Fan Again”

     

    2020               

    • Grand Teatret, Copenhagen, Denmark, “Group Exhibition”
    • Bowes Parris Gallery, London, UK, “Curated for Covid”
    • Everyday Gallery, Antwerp, Belgium, “Limbo”
    • Guts Gallery, London, UK, virtual show “Begin Again”

     

    2019                

    • Delphian Gallery / Guts Gallery, London, UK, “Delphian X Guts”
    • Trestle Gallery, New York, USA, “Lobster Dinner”
    • Ultrastudio, Pescara, Italy, duo show “Exceso De Rudeza”

     

    2018                

    • Union Gallery, London, UK, “They Said I Was Special”
    • The Lightbox Museum, Woking, UK, “Young Contemporary Talent From The Ingram Collection”
    • MO Gallery, Berlin, Germany, “Opening Exhibition”

     

    2016                

    • The Cello Factory, London, UK, “Young Contemporary Talent Prize”

     

    2015                

    • The Lightbox Museum, Woking, UK, “Where Is God Now?”
    • Hoxton Arches, London, UK, “Rock, Paper, Scissors”
    • Camberwell College of Arts, London, UK, “Undergraduate Summer Show”
    • GX Gallery, London, UK, “The 24 Hour Project”
    • Camberwell College of Arts, London, UK, “Interim Show”

     

    2014                

    • Copeland Gallery, London, UK, “Parallel Cities”

     

     

     

    PARTICIPATION IN ART FAIRS

     

    2025

    • Art Rotterdam’25 (with Enari Gallery), Rotterdam, The Netherlands
    • UVNT (with Enari Gallery), Madrid, Spain

     

    2024               

    • Art Athina (with Enari Gallery), Athens, Greece
    • Art Island (with Enari Gallery), Amsterdam, The Netherlands
    • Amsterdam Art Week (“Meet the Cantors” with Enari Gallery), Amsterdam, The Netherlands

     

    2021

    • “Messe in St. Agnes” (with König Galerie), Berlin, Germany

     

     

     

    MUSEUM COLLECTIONS

     

    The Ingram Collection of Modern and Contemporary British Art

     

     

     

    PRESS

     

    2018                

     

    2018                

     

     

  • Exhibitions
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