Graffiti and urban culture are a key reference for Cárcamo, who was also once a graffiti artist and tagger. In his Kase paintings, the artist tags the name Kase, homage to the legendary graffiti writer Kase2 (Jeff Brown), then uses graffiti remover products to produce monochromatic minimalist paintings where the tags are indiscernible as a commentary to the hierarchies of value between urban street art and “high art.” Cárcamo, who was born in El Salvador and raised in Jamaica, Queens, before living in Miami and settling back in NYC, does not consider his work to be solely focused on graffiti.Graffiti is often misunderstood to be only about writing, instead of as one of the expressions of a broader urban hip hop culture. Cárcamo’s monochromatic paintings echo this larger urban repertoire. He shuns oil paint for paint with domestic references such as latex and spray paint and describes his process of painting as looping and sampling. The result are paintings where layers of paint are applied and removed, where paint drip marks are carefully positioned as a collage, and reclaimed readymade materials like plywood frames become a key part of the composition. “I construct painting like hip hop,” he explains, as he describes how tied his work is to a broader urban culture that has been historically surveilled, commodified and misunderstood, and has survived by playing with expression, visibility and concealment.