Submitted by carolyncastano on April 2, 2009 - 1:18pm.
Oscar Cueto and Carolyn Castaño at Walter Maciel Gallery
Contact: Walter Maciel - 310 839 1840, walter@waltermacielgallery.com
walter maciel gallery
2642 s. la cienega blvd.
los angeles, ca 90034
www.waltermacielgallery.com
Gallery 1: Oscar Cueto, Héroe, New Video, Sculpture and Drawings
Gallery 2: Carolyn Castaño, It’s Complicated, New Paintings
4 April – 9 May 2009
Opening Reception: Saturday, April 4th, 6:00 – 8:00pm
Walter Maciel Gallery will present two solos shows by Mexico City based artist Oscar Cueto and Los Angeles based artist Carolyn Castaño. The exhibition will be Cueto’s second with the gallery and the first show for Castaño.
Cueto’s new show entitled Héroe comments on the universal connection of the contemporary art world. With the use of video, sculpture and drawing, the work focuses on the four leading art powers of the world including the USA, England, Germany and France and their relationship to the rest of the world. The main subject is the world map which is shown manipulated and rearranged to comment on location and power. A series of map drawings done in black ink on vellum plays with the notion of a new world order. The continents are repositioned with the lesser powered locales being physically attacked by the four leading countries. In some drawings the recognizable territories intersect in overlapping patterns to disguise their original form with a simple red stain marking the penetration. Other drawings simply show a world view with some or all of the leading countries removed as if they never existed. Made out of laser cut acrylic, the sculptures mimic the drawings with the eastern continents piercing through the western continents at carefully marked locations. Cueto depicts his tongue and cheek hatred for these super powers as an artist producing work in Mexico, a country outside of the parameters. Initially, Cueto wanted to include China as the fifth super power but omitted it because the progress of its international art presence is still undecided.
The drawings will be shown on a light table with the hanging map sculptures overhead. Within the installation hand sewn flags are strategically placed with black coverings on each side to conceal the instant recognition of the country it represents. The only indications of each flag are sporadically placed holes on the surface and the edge of the pole where colors and patterns are carefully discerned. In addition, two videos will be shown projected on either side of the gallery, one displaying a series of moving maps and the other a rock band using cut out maps as their instruments. The video animations are made from hand drawn frame to frame images on a digital notepad putting to motion the line of the corresponding drawings. A series of unframed gouache drawings entitled Brujeria/Witchcraft will be on view in an adjacent space in the gallery.
Cueto is currently showing a similar body of work at the Collette Blanchard Gallery in New York. He has gallery representation in his home base of Mexico City where he has shown regularly for the past five years. A series of Cueto’s work was recently acquired by the Jumex Collection in Mexico City. He recently showed at the Festival la Mar de la Música in Cartagena, Spain and he has been included in solo and group exhibitions throughout Mexico.
In the second gallery, a show of mixed media paintings entitled It’s Complicated will be presented by Carolyn Castaño. These new works depict portraits of the amorous adventures of Latin American guerrillas, drug lords, presidential candidates and beauty queens. The stories range from the Colombian cocaine kingpin Pablo Escobar who catapulted a brutal drug trade to the height of geopolitics while falling in love with the journalist Virginia Vallejo to Laura Zuñiga the “Miss Sinaloa 2008” beauty queen who was arrested with her narco boyfriend Angel Orlando Garcia Urquiza for illegal possession of excessive weapons and ammunition on Christmas Eve. The selection of these notorious figures comments on the fascination society has with tabloid images of love, infamy and crime as an escape from the mundane and habitual. Castaño unveils the ongoing human desire for myth and untiring need to adore our folk heroes meeting global fandom, glamour and digital media.
With the use of kitschy materials such as glitter, rhinestones and flocking, the portraits come to life as replicas of 80s new wave poster art. Each of the subjects is shown surrounded by motifs, colors and patterns that relate to specific parts of their biographies. For example, the green and white stripes in the painting of Pablo Escobar and Virginia Vallejo represent Escobar’s favorite soccer team while the camouflage markings seen in the painting of Ingrid Betancourt and Clara Rojas mimic the uniforms of their captors in the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia). Conflicting fantasies of wealth, honor, dominance and true love contend for the personas of each depicted figure played out in the interpretation of global media. The title It’s Complicated refers to the jargon used in social websites to describe “relationship status” partially as a wink towards the digital networks that increasingly speed these narratives around the globe, but mostly as a realization of the enduring truths of love and desire.
Castaño received her MFA at the University of California, Los Angeles in 2001 and a BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1995. She has had solo shows at Lombard-Freid Fine Art in New York and at Kontainer in Los Angeles. A selection of her work is traveling in the museum exhibition Phantom Sightings: Art after the Chicano Movement which originated at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and is currently on view at the San Antonio Museum of Art.
