Jacaeber Kastor is a writer, artist, gallery-owner and curator of psychedelic art. He is former owner of the successful Psychedelic Solution gallery in New York's West Village.
Biography
Early life
Kastor grew up in Berkeley, California and was exposed to the 1960s counter-culture as a young man. His parents were abstract artists.
He picked up the habit of drawing from his mother, a serial doodler who covered the family desk pad with abstract drawing while talking on the phone.
While working as a traffic patrol boy in 1965 he was hit by a car and seriously injured. Bedridden, he began drawing elaborate topographical landscapes with settlements. He began collecting psychedelic posters and handbills from venues in the Bay Area during the 1960s.
Before becoming a gallery owner, Kastor was a competitive skier, racing in Squaw Valley.
Artist
In 2019 his drawings were shown in a retrospective exhibit titled “The Psychedelic Sun & Other Drawings” at
Brian Chambers The Chambers Project gallery in Nevada City, California.
Writer
Kastor is a contributing author of The Art of the Fillmore, a book about San Francisco rock posters. He published and contributed writing to a booklet about Stanislav Szukalski titled "Song of the Mute Singer." Between 1991 and 1995 he worked as a columnist for Wes Wilson's ‘Off the Wall’ magazine, writing about psychedelic rock concert poster art & culture.
In addition to his work as author of books, he wrote editorial content as the New York correspondent for UK magazine
Zigzag
A zigzag is a pattern made up of small corners at variable angles, though constant within the zigzag, tracing a path between two parallel lines; it can be described as both jagged and fairly regular.
In geometry, this pattern is described as a ...
in 1982. In the early 2000s he became a contributing writer for Juxtapoz Magazine, and was given a credit as “Psychedelic Guru” on the masthead.
Films
Kastor has appeared in three documentary films about art: New Brow: Contemporary Underground Art (2009), Robert Williams Mr Bitchin (2010), and H R Giger Revealed (2010).
Psychedelic Solution Gallery
On Halloween of 1986, Kastor opened a gallery in New York City's West Village and named it Psychedelic Solution after liquid LSD. The opening exhibit was the work of
Rick Griffin
Richard Alden "Rick" Griffin (June 18, 1944 – August 18, 1991) was an American artist and one of the leading designers of psychedelic posters in the 1960s. He was a key figure in the underground comix movement as a fouding member of the ' ...
, who took up residency in the gallery. Shows of work by the other “big five” psychedelic poster designers soon followed, including
Stanley Mouse
Stanley George Miller (born October 10, 1940), better known as Mouse or Stanley Mouse, is an American artist who is notable for his 1960s psychedelic rock concert poster designs and album covers for the Grateful Dead, Journey, and other bands.
...
,
Alton Kelley
Alton Kelley (June 17, 1940 – June 1, 2008) was an American artist known for his psychedelic art, in particular his designs for 1960s rock concert posters and album covers. Along with artists Rick Griffin, Stanley Mouse, Victor Moscoso ...
,
Wes Wilson, and
Victor Moscoso
Victor Moscoso (born July 28, 1936) is a Spanish–American artist best known for producing psychedelic rock posters, advertisements, and underground comix in San Francisco during the 1960s and 1970s. He was the first of the rock poster artists of ...
. He also exhibited art by
Juxtapoz
''Juxtapoz Art & Culture Magazine'' (pronounced ''JUX-tah-pose'') is a magazine created in 1994 by a group of artists and art collectors including Robert Williams, Fausto Vitello, C.R. Stecyk III (a.k.a. Craig Stecyk), Greg Escalante, and Eric ...
founder
Robert Williams Robert, Rob, Robbie, Bob or Bobby Williams may refer to:
Architecture
* Train %26 Williams#Robert Edmund Williams, Robert Edmund Williams (1874–1960), Canadian-American architect
* Robert Williams (architect) (1848–1918), Welsh architect a ...
,
Wes Wilson, the
Alien designer and horror artist
H. R. Giger
Hans Ruedi Giger ( ; ; 5 February 1940 – 12 May 2014) was a Swiss artist best known for his airbrushed images that blended human physiques with machines, an art style known as " biomechanical". He was part of the special effects team that won ...
,
Lee Conklin,
Robert Crumb
Robert Dennis Crumb (; born August 30, 1943) is an American artist who often signs his work R. Crumb. His work displays a nostalgia for American folk culture of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and satire of contemporary American c ...
,
Joe Coleman,
Alex Grey
Alex Grey (born November 29, 1953) is an American visual artist, author, teacher, and Vajrayana practitioner known for creating spiritual and psychedelic artwork such as his 21-painting ''Sacred Mirrors'' series. He works in multiple forms includi ...
,
Vaughn and Mark Bode,
Mark Mothersbaugh
Mark Allen Mothersbaugh (; born May 18, 1950) is an American musician and composer. He came to prominence in the late 1970s as co-founder, lead vocalist and keyboardist of the new wave band Devo, whose " Whip It" was a top 20 single in the US ...
,
Paul Mavrides
Paul Mavrides (born 1952) is an American artist, best known for his critique-laden comics, cartoons, paintings, graphics, performances and writings that encompass a disturbing yet humorous catalog of the social ills and shortcomings of human civ ...
,
Spain Rodriguez
Manuel Rodriguez (March 2, 1940 – November 28, 2012), better known as Spain or Spain Rodriguez, was an American underground cartoonist who created the character Trashman.
Influences
His experiences on the road with the motorcycle club, the ...
,
Gilbert Shelton
Gilbert Shelton (born May 31, 1940) is an American cartoonist and a key member of the underground comix movement. He is the creator of the iconic underground characters '' The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers'', '' Fat Freddy's Cat'', and '' Wonder ...
,
John Van Hamersveld
John Van Hamersveld (born September 1, 1941, Baltimore, Maryland, United States) is an Americans, American graphic artist and illustrator who designed record jackets for pop and psychedelic bands from the 1960s onward. Among the 300 albums are the ...
,
S. Clay Wilson, Jonathan Shaw,
Pushead
Brian Schroeder, better known as Pushead, is an American graphic artist. He is best known for his album covers and other merchandise for bands in the hardcore punk and heavy metal genres.
Career
Originally from Boise, Idaho, Schroeder forme ...
, and
Axel Stocks.
A “hip, funky space,” Psychedelic Solution hosted the work of poster artists, pop-surreal / lowbrow artists, and street artists. Kastor was interested in showing unconventional but popular art. In 1990 he traveled to Tepic, Mexico to pick up artwork by Cristobal Gonzalez for his upcoming “Huichol Yarn” exhibit of paintings, and was arrested by Mexican police with
Carlo McCormick, Leo and Raven Mercado, and Prem Das on charges of conspiracy to export peyote.
In 1988 he opened The Cure of Souls, “the largest display ever of LSD blotter acid sheets” from a collection owned by Mark McCloud,
who had shown his collection in San Francisco as The Institute of Illegal Art. The FBI came to the gallery and asked if they could take pictures. Before opening the exhibit the art was inspected by police, to ensure that it had been “chemically neutralized.” Criticized for elevating drug paraphernalia to art, Kastor said the sheets were "cultural symbols,” and said that LSD was, “contemporary American society’s mystical outlet.”
Because much of the work shown at the gallery was related to music, exhibits were often featured on
MTV
MTV (an initialism of Music Television) is an American cable television television channel, channel and the flagship property of the MTV Entertainment Group sub-division of the Paramount Media Networks division of Paramount Global. Launched on ...
news, increasing interest in the mailing list, which expanded to over fifty thousand people. Media coverage of the gallery increased dramatically.
The gallery closed in Nov 2004. Kastor was bought out, and the commercial inventory and archives were trucked away. Over 500,000 pieces of printed material and fine art were sold.
The front doors of Psychedelic Solution were covered in a collage of stickers Kastor applied for 15 years or more. They were removed and displayed at the March 2005 grand opening of The Ludlow Santo Domingo Library, Geneva, and traveled to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, Cleveland.
In addition to amassing an encyclopedic collection of psychedelic posters, Kastor established a poster company, Psy-Sol publishing, which printed over fifty posters for Psychedelic Solution exhibitions, and re-published some classics which had gone out of print by artists the gallery represented.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Kastor, Jacaeber
Living people
Year of birth missing (living people)
Place of birth missing (living people)
Writers from Berkeley, California
Artists from Berkeley, California
Writers from New York City
Artists from New York City
American art curators
21st-century American artists