CURVE

Paper's accessibility and ordinary functions belie its tremendous import. While seemingly anonymous in most of our daily transactions, it actually bears the weight of many of the most sacred aspects our lives.

Paper documents our identity and memories, it is our currency, and it holds our records, contracts, receipts, proclamations, cherished sentiments and hallowed words. It binds individuals and nations together or decrees their separation. Paper has a vast responsibility, one that is easily taken for granted.

Its simple appearance also betrays its dichotomy and ultimate power; strong and delicate, weightless and easily torn, it poses the ability to destroy lives with the breach of a written agreement recorded on its surface.

In Curve, I revisit the form and function of paper. Its original unassuming, pristine white condition is radically altered and redefined.

My work throws a potent curve to the assumed identity of paper by transforming it into a virtual temple for contemplation of its role in our lives. I create forms and perceptions with the paper, building walls that cascade torn twirls and create still surfaces that move across the entire gallery. The static surfaces and locks of the paper are teeming with latent, almost sensual energy, the delicacy of their twists mirroring the curves and turns of life.

I love the process of transforming familiar materials and having them viewed in unfamiliar ways. I simultaneously pay homage to their essential nature while presenting them anew. I smooth, spread, tear, and meditate upon the paper, building it into larger than life compositions. The process is meditative, repetitive and contemplative. Paper becomes a multilayered force to be reckoned with.

CASTILLO

HAIR IS A METAPHOR



Charged with association and meaning, hair is thesubject of my work, embracing the peculiar sacredness of our relationship with hair.

It challenges real hair by being larger than life and by presenting it in an unconventional form. Oppositional tensions are made sculpturally with the familiar viewed unfamiliarly.

Legends, rituals, folktales, identities, DNA sampling, stereotypes, value, sacredness, care and attachment are centered around our hair. I like exploring the idea of exemplifying something that we have simultaneously control and no control over.

The aspect of life and death in our identity with our hair raises numerous questions. These questions are both cross cultural and rhetorical.

Semiotically coded, hair as a metaphor embodies its power to both attract and repulse, value and devalue, or become unrecognized weaponry.

The work has hints of historical symbolism. Though I manipulate materials, I enjoy maximizing their beauty by presenting them minimally altered yet in no way denying or changing their identity.

As a symbol, the significance of hair is powerful universally and psychologically.

I attempt to charge space with a poetic elegance. Potently raw, silently strong.

CASTILLO