94 Cleveland street W1T 6NW Tel: 0207 7388 7868 info@galleryat94.com

Cain Caser
b. 1973 London
No formal education

Hypnagogia

- The state of hallucinatory consciousness found at the borderland of sleep. Characterized by highly saturated colours, vivid imagery and portions of dialogue it is often accompanied with a sharp kick on awakening -

Artist's statement

As a kid growing up I was obsessed with graffiti. I lived near the end of the Metropolitan line so everything that was going on in London was delivered straight to my doorstep. The people, style, mystery and adventure of it completely fascinated me.
By twelve years of age I had started writing graffiti and at sixteen it was dominating my life. Shortly afterwards like many others around that time I got side tracked by rave culture which then proceeded to provide an altogether different form of distraction.

This body of work represents a reflection and distillation of both periods. The visual shock of seeing a newly pieced train on my way in to school filtered through the peculiarly lucid experience of my late teens.

The paintings have been conceived as portraits. Occupying the gap between figuration and abstraction they exploit the tendency to see faces where none exist and in turn be interpreted according to an individuals own unique visual hierarchy.

The motivations of my younger self, ego and excitement, are the same cues that I paint by today. My working method currently is to cut up and photocopy sketches with paint on paper creating a collaged drawing which then serves as maquette for a painting.