Born in Pohang, South Korea and adopted by an Italian/Irish-American family in Princeton, New Jersey, Dan Castranova works in drawing, painting, print-media, and video. Mostly focusing on drawing these days, his work explores dreams, American identity, conformity, dualism, and ambivalence. Dan Castranova creates collage-like scenes often heavily influenced by much of the media he consumed at a young age, including various manga and anime, vintage cartoons, video games, music, and so on. From tracing pages from Akira Toriyama’s ​Dragon Ball to his face glued to the television set - studying ​Tom and Jerry cartoons, his work and style is also inspired by artists such as Edward Hopper, Andy Warhol, Larry Rivers, Frank O’Hara, Neo Rauch, and Ashley Wood. Other sources of inspiration include Haruki Murakami novels, David Lynch, Takeshi Kitano films, kung fu movies, various film noir, mysticism, Post-War America, scouring antique malls, and random other things old people like.

Dan Castranova graduated from School of the Art Institute of Chicago with a BFA in Fine Art in 2017.

@drmcast