A Marco Castillo art exhibition is now taking place at the Haines Gallery. The artwork in the show focuses on the artist’s investigation of Cuba’s linked political and design histories.
For a number of decades, Marco Castillo has been producing paintings. He used to be a part of the group Los Carpinteros, but he is now a solo performer. His works of art include a wide range of subjects, such as politics, culture, and social change. He claims that whatever he is working on is an echo of the past that still has an impact on us now.
Castillo is looking at the visual vocabulary of post-revolutionary Cuba. He is producing vibrant paper pieces from his Libreta de notas (Notebooks) collection, which showcases abstract experimentation. Familia Castillo Valdes (2022), a mahogany sculpture from Castillo’s most recent series Juego de sala, is one of the works on display. Juego de sala explores the materials and forms of Cuban modernism while looking at how the Revolution affected family life.
Important Cuban artists’ sculptures and substantial works on paper are featured in the Parlor Games exhibition. Some of these artists were formerly supported by the government, but their work was later deemed to be too bourgeois, and they came under fire. In contrast to the works on paper, which use trompe l’oeil techniques to give the sculptures the appearance of being made of various materials, Castillo’s sculptures mix elements of modern design with traditional materials and techniques from Cuba.
The art exhibit Parlor Games explores the subject of loss in Cuba. Some of the artists’ works are about events that happened in the distant past, while others are about events that are now occurring. However, everything is linked in some way.
In the 2019 Havana Biennial, Marco Castillo made his solo debut in Berlin, Germany, Los Angeles, California, Madrid, Spain, Mérida, Mexico, So Paolo, Brazil, Turku, Finland, and Vienna, Austria. Prestigious organizations like the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, the Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Gallery in Washington, D.C., the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in California, and the Museum of Modern Art in Chicago all have his works created with Los Carpinteros in their collections.
