Artist:

Marco Castillo (b.1971, lives and works in Havana, Cuba)

Images:

Installation view, UTA Artist Space, Los Angeles

Maria, 2018

Prima Libreta de Notas, 2018

Description:

A solo show of recent work by Marco Castillo (formerly of the group Los Carpenteros), held during the Havana Biennial in 2019, and subsequently at UTA Artist Space, Los Angeles.

“The entire series is inspired by this utopian generation of Cuban graphic designers, interior designers, and architects from the first 20 years of revolution who are for the most part practically unknown in Cuba today.

The works are named after the figures in that generation that we have managed to retrieve and dust off: Gonzalo Córdoba, María Victoria Caignet, Reinaldo Togores, Heriberto Duverger, Rodolfo Fernández Suárez (Fofi), Joaquín Galván, Walter Betancourt, etc.

For example, the work Beltrán (2019) refers to Félix Beltrán, who is considered the father of the Cuban poster and one of the most important references in Latin American design. It is inspired by the logo that this designer made for the Cuban pavilion for Expo ‘67 in Montreal. From Felix’s original design, I realized this work in wood and woven rattan, referencing the modular systems that were characteristic of design in those years.

In this exhibition I act as if I were a designer of that time, to pick up and continue a tradition that disappeared in Cuba at the beginning of the 1980s.”

–Marco Castillo, www.cubanartnews.org