"This past January, at the annual National Association of Music Merchants (NAMM) show in Anaheim, California, Slayer guitarist Gary Holt unveiled a guitar adorned with eighteen vials of his own blood. He'd commissioned thirty-four-year-old New York City-based artist Vincent Castiglia to paint the guitar, and in keeping with the badassery and playful exhibitionism of the whole project, the artist drew the blood he ultimately used for the artwork from Holt backstage after a concert on Long Island."
"Naturally, the artist himself, Castiglia, was also thrust into the spotlight. What struck me about this project and its denouement at NAMM was how the dizzying reams of press coverage were, almost inevitably, overlooking the artwork itself. Castiglia's blood painting on Holt's guitar is a darkly poignant meditation on that iconic fallen angel, Lucifer. In Castiglia's hands Satan is depicted as a brooding, almost repentant figure, the heft of his ambivalence adding to his biblical mystique."
Slayer guitarist Gary Holt unveiled a guitar at NAMM adorned with eighteen vials of his own blood and painted by Vincent Castiglia. The paint was produced from blood drawn backstage after a Long Island concert. The reveal attracted broad media coverage across metal outlets, horror sites, and VICE's Noisey. Castiglia's painting portrays Lucifer as a brooding, almost repentant figure, lending a poignant ambivalence to the imagery. The project highlights the tension between sensational spectacle and serious artistic practice. Castiglia began experimenting with blood painting at eighteen and used it exclusively by 2003.
Read at Hi-Fructose Magazine - The New Contemporary Art Magazine
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