ABOUT | chaval Kaliyeski

Damian Octavio Kaliyeski (Chaval)

When I choose what to paint, I’m guided by intuition.
I find inspiration in whatever, for some mysterious reason, captures my attention — as if it were an expression from beyond, seeking to manifest itself in the material world through me. An image presents itself — as an object, situation, event, photograph, scene, or written phrase — and awakens a need to explore.

My work is nourished by vision and unconscious desire: a sensation that gives rise to a question, to a search. Uncertainty is an essential part of the process.

I work with oil in a traditional way. All the resources invented by the artists I admire are there, like a great toolbox. They drive me to research endlessly in the inexhaustible source of art history, while also feeding my desire to take on new challenges. I always want to do something different — that’s what keeps the flame alive.

When I look at the paintings of the great masters, I want to paint like them.
I want to feel, in my own body, what it means to navigate with the brush through combinations of colors and abstract forms that suddenly reveal the concrete. I love being deceived by the magic of painting, discovering it, and making it my own.

Although my painting follows a realist line, it is the imperfections that give it a spiritual character — revealed through color and the forms that emerge during the process. My style varies according to the atmosphere I need to express, an atmosphere that arises first in thought before it becomes matter.

My academic training, my experience in art restoration, and my continuous dialogue with nineteenth-century painting are fundamental pillars of my artistic practice. These experiences have not only refined my technical tools but also remain an inexhaustible source of reflection and inspiration.

Chaval constructs his images from a purely pictorial perspective, for painting is his only tool and resource to build his images and display his poetry: figures, landscape, and mood created with only brushes and color; in his work, even spills and blank spaces are eloquent, and they serve a good faith narrative and aesthetic. Light is also key, and the artist always portrays it as ideal, almost apocryphal: a light of dusk, flat, melancholic, the light that makes everything look golden and a bit more beautiful, precisely because it’s about to fade into darkness.

Chaval prefers the unnerving, sardonic, subtly off-centered, in the midst of a reality that, while perfect, lurks menacing.

Mariano Soto - Art Historian

BIOGRAPHY
Chaval (Damian Octavio Kaliyeski) was born in Buenos Aires in 1975 and moved to New York City in 1999. Formally trained in drawing and painting from an early age, he has worked for more than twenty-five years as a visual artist, painting restorer, and researcher in art and antiques.
His direct experience with historical paintings, traditional materials, and restoration has deeply informed his artistic practice. His work combines classical craftsmanship and figurative painting with theatrical settings, personal symbolism, and a distinctly contemporary vision.
In 2003, Chaval received an Artist Achievement Award presented by Charlotta Kotik, then Curator and Chair of the Department of Contemporary Art at the Brooklyn Museum of Art.
Today, his paintings continue to explore the dialogue between art history and contemporary imagery. Each work is conceived and painted individually by the artist and exists as a unique original.

Solo Exhibitions
2004 Excessive / Lunarbase, Williamsburg, NY
2003 PIPU & CHAVAL / Lunarbase, Williamsburg, NY
1998 Espacio Giesso / Bs As, Argentina / Chaval - Salamanko
1997 Espacio Giesso / Bs As, Argentina / Chaval – FuentesBo

International Group Exhibitions

2015 Brooklyn Biennial Submissional / Cotton Candy Machine gallery, Brooklyn NY

2015 Y un soplido se llevara tu asombro / Teatro 25 de Mayo, Buenos Aires

2014 Argentinean Affair / Lilac Gallery NY

2008 Buenos Aires Affair / The Gowanus Studio Space. 119 8th Street, Brooklyn

2008 A passion for Pixels / ISLIP Art museum, Long Island, NY
2005 Over the Top, Under the Rug / CICA The shore institute of the Contemporary Arts, New Jersey
2005 Funkadelicide / Broadway Gallery / SOHO, NY
2005 Nova Young Art Fair / West Loop, CHICAGO
2005 Link to the world, Lunarbase, Williamsburg, NY
2005 Art Miami 2005 / Miami Beach
2004 The CHARACTERISM "Link the World", Gallery Geki, Shimokitazawa, Tokyo
2004 CHARACTERISM, Free space gallery, Tokyo
2004 CHARACTERISM / Artist achievement award, WAH Center, Williamsburg, NY
2003 PALM BEACH CONTEMPORARY/ ART FAIR / Martin du Louvre Galery (Paris)
2003 The CHARACTERISM / Lunarbase, Williamsburg, NY
2003 CHARACTERISM / Mirai Award, Lunarbase, Williamsburg, NY

Awards
2003 Artist Achievement Award, CHARACTERISM, given by Charlotta Kotik, Curator and Chair of Department of Contemporary Art, Brooklyn Museum of Art.
2003 Mirai (Future) Award, CHARACTERISM, given by Lunarbase Gallery and Sozo Shoten.

chaval artist painting in he's studio in 2003