Marco Castillo's Black Paintings respond to the humiliating way in which people in Cuba are denounced by their fellow citizens. In spontaneous actions, the facades and windows of houses where supposed opponents of the Cuban Revolution live are smeared with black paint. Castillo's paintings on Plexiglas, however, do not depict or reenact this violence. The traces of color are created by hands dyed black which carry the Plexiglas panels around the studio, hanging them up and taking them down again - a process that is as commonplace in the studio as, unfortunately, political repression is in Cuba.
Black Paintings, 2023
Acrylic paint on Plexiglass
Various dimensions
Photos: Ladislav Zajac
Marco A. Castillo
Marco A. Castillo is co-founder of the collective Los Carpinteros. The group was created in 1992 in Havana, Cuba, to develop practices that combine architectural forms, design and art, independent of individual authorship. While the collective gained wide international recognition as a group, Castillo has also been recognized for his individual work. In his career as an individual artist, he has experimented with the intersections between fine art, applied art, and decorative art to problematize aesthetic expectations and preconceptions associated with the Latin American history of modernism, socialist design, and Cuban traditions. In doing so, he also focuses on Cuba's current political developments as well as the now often forgotten achievements of modern Cuban architects and designers. He has been awarded different prizes, latest being the Medalla por la Cultura Nacional (Cuba, 2002).
- Anna Boghiguian
- Candice Breitz
- Marco A. Castillo
- CATPC
- Alice Creischer
- Chto Delat
- Clegg & Guttmann
- Eugenio Dittborn
- Heinrich Dunst
- Anna Ehrenstein
- León Ferrari
- Peter Friedl
- Sophie Gogl
- Barbara Hammer
- Ramon Haze
- Hiwa K
- Simon Lehner
- Renzo Martens
- Chris Martin
- Frédéric Moser & Philippe Schwinger
- Oswald Oberhuber
- Mario Pfeifer
- Dierk Schmidt
- Santiago Sierra
- Michael E. Smith
- Franz Erhard Walther
- Clemens von Wedemeyer
- Tobias Zielony