Artist Statement

Daniel Castro is a multi-media artist interested in exploring themes of cultural identity, displacement, and erasure within the context of the urban landscape. By way of combining painting and sculpture, his work breaks out of the traditional painting format, resulting in assemblages that propose painting as object.

Castro’s practice is also characterized by a fascination with materials that blur the line between reality and artifice. He creates hyperreal replicas of urban detritus such as concrete barriers, traffic cones, and various other objects that typically exist within construction sites around the city. These objects are inherently embedded with connotations of gentrification, authority, and Masculinity.

Castro’s work with clothing such as hoodies, sagging jeans, and sneakers reframes these garments as symbols of identity and systemic scrutiny. The hoodie in particular becomes the most loaded signifier in the work—a representation of both protection and perceived threat.

Biography

Daniel Castro (b. 1997, The Bronx, NY) is a mixed-media artist who creates paintings, sculptures, and installations informed by New York City street culture and his Latino heritage. Castro graduated with a BFA from SUNY Purchase in 2020 and received his MFA from ColumbiaUniversity in 2025. Castro is the recipient of the Rema Hort Mann Emerging Artist Grant, Liu Shiming Foundation Fellowship, and is a Bronx Museum 2026 AIM Fellow. Notable exhibitions include Around the Way at LatchKey Gallery, New York, NY (2023); (Sur)face at Chilli Art Projects, London, ENG (2023); Día y Noche at Sabroso!, Santurce, Puerto Rico (2025); and Castro’s thesis exhibition with Columbia University at the Wallach Art Gallery, New York, NY (2025).