• Overview
    View works. Douglas Cantor. Photography by Chloé Polkinghorne.
    Douglas Cantor. Photography by Chloé Polkinghorne.
    View works
     Cantor’s paintings both record as well as project onto his day to day life, they celebrate,

    romanticise, reminisce and grieve. resulting in not just paintings but a practice that is

    multilayered and personal. Recurring motifs, familiar imagery, personal objects, daily life,

    close relationships, personal desires, snippets of life and traumas - they are shaped by the

    act of painting itself with the painting process as the driving force behind the decisions made.

    Beneath Cantor’s expressive paintings lies a much more personal, emotional and private

    aspect of his work, an assortment of personal jokes and inside anecdotes that are woven

    into the imagery of the paintings, like layers to a person, its meaning ready to resonate with some but not all. Cantor's titles and writing serve as a sort of bridge offered to the viewer, a window to the meaning behind the marks as well to his emotional and mental state.

     

    As a Latino immigrant to the UK, a common motive in Cantor’s paintings is the exploration of diaspora identity and the transfiguration of culture through the experience of the immigrant, resulting in images often punctuated by feelings of segregation, rejection and discrimination that simultaneously manage to remain romantic and idealized, wishful and hopeful. They preserve the dreamings of the immigrant in what may be a collective cultural version of the lie sold as the American Dream, but in this case, his own.

     

    Through this aspect of his work, Cantor tries to come to terms with the ways his culture and

    identity have mutated through his experience of immigration. His work delves into what it

    means to not belong here or there, feelings of a fragmented life and the stark contrast of

    realities between the place that was left behind and the, often unwelcoming, new place.

    Circumstances and experiences all too familiar to the immigrant that simultaneously

    strengthen and dilute what it means to him to be from somewhere else, somewhere past, or nowhere at all.

  • 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
  • Art fairs
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