Dreaming your world

The two elements most surprising about Dima Kastalyan's paintings are his extraordinary imagination and great skill in execution. The painter chose an extremely time-consuming technique, making dots and dotting his artistic tool. In art history it has another name and is known as pointillism. The name comes from the French word point = dot. Thus, one could say that Dima is a pointillist, but this term rather directs our associations to French art of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when the principles of pointilism practically began to be applied on his canvases by Georges Seurat, the creator and great master of this technique. Dima Kastalyan, of course, knows his French predecessor. Just as he is well acquainted with the painterly legacy of René Magritte, which is also one of his favorite artistic references.

They are not so much his predecessors, but rather the ever-present inspiration for the very separate pictorial worlds created in each new painting by Dima, who each time creates an extremely precise and artfully crafted image. They are populated by characters created in his imagination. An imagination that has much of the world of a boy fascinated by being able to draw anything that comes to mind. The ability to do absolutely anything he wants evidently entertains and “spins” him a lot. Paper is patient and easily accepts thousands or even millions of black dots and lines on its surface. On the canvases the dots become colorful, but their color range is dimmed - pinks, greens, blues, reds. They all look as if seen through a kind of filter. This color scheme distinguishes, even at a passing glance, Dima Kastalyan's paintings.

On top of that there are strange animal characters, forming a whole separate bestiary of his: cats, monkeys, snails, lizards, birds. Well, but it's not that simple, because monkeys are often disguised as pink cats, cats as people, and then there are turtle-birds, or bird-snails, snake-birds or even more complex lizard-bird-turtles. And then there are the larger cat-like lions, or other jaguars or cheetahs, in somewhat fancy colors of blues or pinks. Lots of assorted, hybridized small things: worm-snails, beaked snakes or scavengers, fancifully transformed small birds of non-existent shapes. There are some people. In one of the paintings, you can even see the painter himself, peeping at the scene he himself has just painted and who seems to be amazed by it himself.

On top of that, there are other completely non-obvious, and actually redundant elements, such as high, strappy boot tops, sandals on eyelet soles, oversized cowboy boots, and old-style camo boots - but as if they were too long, scaled down, resembling seven-mile boots.

The consistently omnipresent horror vacui is astonishing. The painter clearly cares that not even the smallest piece of the painting's surface remains empty, because even if no creature appears on it, it still pulsates with its dotted surface. If the scenery of these scenes is interiors, they are always hung with more images, which once again densify the space shown. The images vibrate and create a great vortex, shot by their author.

He himself says the following about them: “My canvases are a painterly diary on my journey as an artist and a human being. It is always a thoughtful dialogue with myself and with the viewer. With my works I want to remind viewers that they should also dream, dream of something great, something barely attainable.”

In these canvases, it's very clear to see the pursuit of dreams - dreams of our own world, of our own characters, unlike any others we've ever seen before, either in our own or in other people's dreams. And these don't have to be night dreams at all; they can be waking dreams.

Bogusław Deptuła

Dima Kashtalyan is an international artist, illustrator and street art creator. He lives and works in Warsaw, Poland. His style combines dotwork, pointillism and stippling techniques, bringing to life black-and-white and colorful prints, murals and illustrations. More than 20 years ago, Dima began his artistic journey with classic graffiti, developing it into an artistic expression based on honesty, responsibility and a deep belief in the value of creative work. His work reflects the artist's inner world, embodying emotions, principles and beliefs, and addresses contemporary issues, portraying them through familiar but unconventional objects imbued with symbolic meanings.

His works have been exhibited worldwide, from Art Hsinchu in Taiwan to BSF in Australia, Waterford Walls in Ireland to Secretly at Sawicki Gallery in Belarus.
The artist has collaborated with Lavazza, Harper's Magazine, AFAR Media and clothing brand Cropp, among others.