Art by Two Latin American Artists in Two Global Centers

Two artists with the first names Marco are holding solo exhibitions at the Nara Roesler galleries: the Uruguayan Marco Maggi, in São Paulo, and the Cuban Marco Castillo, in New York
We are exhibiting two Latin Americans, coincidentally with the same first name, Marco, one born north of the equator, the Cuban Marco Castillo, the other below the equator, the Uruguayan Marco Maggi. But first I will take a detour to the beginnings of Modern Art to get to them.

At the end of the 19th century, the French avant-garde, which an art critic called “impressionist”, introduced a new way of applying paint to canvas with the intention of capturing the effects of light on objects. Instead of the careful brushstrokes of academic painters, that is, those who followed the strict dictates of the Beaux Arts (Paris Academy of Fine Arts), the most famous in the world and dictator of the prevailing style, the Impressionists proposed painting with short, quick brushstrokes, often without mixing the colors on the palette, but suggesting the final color through the sum of the parts (the colors) on the canvas itself, to give an “impression” of what was seen – think of Monet, Renoir, Van Gogh – instead of aiming for the perfect, almost photographic reproduction, as the academics sought (Delacroix, Bouguereau, Jacques-Louis David). Of course, at first, the avant-garde was rejected by everyone, not to mention the repudiation of the Beaux Arts medallions. But the revolutionary novelty would become the first step towards modern art. After all, why paint perfectly if the invention of photography reproduced the image perfectly? In France, at the beginning of the following century, Picasso and Bracque proposed Cubism. This fatal blow to academicism fragmented the image even further, and even mixed collages into its compositions with elements of graphic arts, which also took a leap forward. Soon after, a politicized group of Italian painters (Boccioni, Marinetti, Balla) drew on the Cubist experience to create their version of modernity, dubbed Futurism by Marinetti, the theoretician of the group. Fascinated by progress and speed, the Futurists took the first step towards Op-art, going deeper by fragmenting and slicing the image to convey the sensation of speed, synonymous with frenetic modern times. (Tip: watch the classic film “Modern Times” by Charlie Chaplin, where the incomparable Charlie Chaplin mocks speed and new times. A must).

At the same time, the sine qua non of French artist Marcel Duchamp emerged with his iconic “Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2”, from 1912, which further advanced the direction of visual arts. In opposition to the futurist ideas of acceleration and movement as a continuous flow, Duchamp, unlike the futurists, decomposes time through deceleration, enabling the visualization of movement.
“Marco Castillo: From the Circle to the Star”, New York

With this background we take a leap to arrive at the geometrization of the optical-kinetic effect that the Cuban Marco Castillo (b. 1971) presents in his first solo show in New York. From the Circle to the Star, the title of the exhibition, thus in English, refers to the evolution between two geometric elements, the circle and the star. Working on connections between politics and design, form and function, history, art and decoration, which discuss the clash of the functional versus the non-functional, the artist born in Havana, who lives and works in Mérida, Mexico, creates complex installations and geometric-sculptural compositions that intertwine materials such as mahogany, paper, fabric, straw lattice, rubber and birch plywood, resulting in three-dimensional works of great optical effect, challenging the traditional conventions between art and design.

In his narrative, Castillo assumes himself as a defender and propagator of the Cuban artistic heritage through the references he makes to key figures in the architectural production and design of his country, among them Gonzalo Córdoba, María Victoria Caignet, Rodolfo Fernández Suáez (Fofi), Joaquín Galván and Walter Betancourt, all from the “forgotten generation” of the 1940s and 1950s.

Marco Castillo’s work is featured in important institutional collections, including the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Centro de Arte Contemporáneo Reina Sofia, Madrid; Daros Foundation, Zurich; Tate Modern, London; and in New York in two museums, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and the Whitney Museum of American Art.
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