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The Decorator's Home, 2019

The Decorator’s Home is a project by Marco A. Castillo, inspired by modern Cuban furniture and interior design.

In this project Marco personifies the life and work of a decorator that evolves from a design of abstract forms related to a Cuban modernism resembling a North American design of commercial nature from the 50´s, to an aesthetic influenced by a new more figurative and committed ideology resembling the Soviet and revolutionary style of the 60´s and 70´s.

In the early days of the Revolution, a group of designers and architects, led by Celia Sanchez and Ivan Espin, worked on a project that could be considered an aesthetic revolution.

That group would be in charge of projecting and producing new spaces that would module life of the so-called new man. These were furniture and objects of a more austere type and with a more practical sense, but with an avantguard design that sometimes reminds us of Scandinavian furniture and the early designs of Ikea.

Local wood was used for these new productions, such as mahogany and red cedar combined with soviet marine plywood; the cream marble “Bayamo” and traditional Cuban elements from the colonial days, such as: caning and latticework made out of wood, ceramic or cement. At the end of the 70’s, this process was abandoned due to the lack of capital, the absence of a market and the lack of understanding of institutions that stigmatized that productions for having a “bourgeois taste”.

The project suggests the continuity of this tradition and experiments with the possibility of an avantguard that never became a concrete reality. Marco A. Castillo revisits the eye-catching folding screens of Joaquin Galvan and Rodolfo Fernandez Suarez (Fofi) and, taking advantage of the scheme of the latticework, he turns them into a support for a mystery word puzzle.

Marco A. Castillo, Córdoba (vertical), 2020, tzalam, rattan, 184 x 124.9 x 99.5 cm
Marco A. Castillo, Córdoba (vertical), 2020, tzalam, rattan, 184 x 124.9 x 99.5 cm
Marco A. Castillo, Córdoba (vertical), 2020, tzalam, rattan, 184 x 124.9 x 99.5 cm

tzalam, rattan, 184 x 124.9 x 99.5 cm

Marco A. Castillo, Galván (Section I and II), 2019, caoba/ mahogany, two parts, 225 x 195 x 16 cm each
Marco A. Castillo, Galván (Section I and II), 2019, caoba/ mahogany, two parts, 225 x 195 x 16 cm each
Marco A. Castillo, Galván (Section I and II), 2019, caoba/ mahogany, two parts, 225 x 195 x 16 cm each

caoba/ mahogany, two parts, 225 x 195 x 16 cm each

Marco A. Castillo, Ivan 2, 2020, madera/ wood, 324 x 271 x 170 cm
Marco A. Castillo, Ivan 2, 2020, madera/ wood, 324 x 271 x 170 cm

madera/ wood, 324 x 271 x 170 cm

Marco A. Castillo, Franco Castro, 2020, paper, dimensions variable
Marco A. Castillo, Franco Castro, 2020, paper, dimensions variable

paper, dimensions variable

Marco A. Castillo, Maria Elena, 2020, wood, fabric, 150 x 150 x 50.4 cm
Marco A. Castillo, Maria Elena, 2020, wood, fabric, 150 x 150 x 50.4 cm

wood, fabric, 150 x 150 x 50.4 cm

Marco A. Castillo, Alamar, 2019, wood, rattan, 124 x 137 x 5 cm

wood, rattan, 124 x 137 x 5 cm

Marco A. Castillo, Andrés, 2018, wc/paper, 130 x 113 cm

wc/paper, 130 x 113 cm

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).



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