UTA Artist Space presents
Marco A. Castillo: The Decorator’s Home
May 31 – July 13, 2019
(Beverly Hills, CA — May 20, 2019) — UTA Artist Space is pleased to present The Decorator’s Home, a solo exhibition by Marco Castillo, curated by Neville Wakefield. This is Castillo’s first solo exhibition in the U.S. after 26 years of collaboration within the world-renowned Los Carpinteros collective.
Inspired by Cuban Modernism, The Decorator’s Home personifies the vision of a fictional interior designer, tracing their style evolution from the commercial, North American-influenced Modernist design of the 1950s to the revolutionary, Soviet-influenced style of the 1960s and 1970s. Through sculptural installations, watercolors, drawings and a video, The Decorator’s Home is an attempt to capture the work of a generation that was cut short.
The exhibition’s central metaphor belongs to a series of mobiles. Literally hanging in the balance, they are measuring instruments produced as part of a black market economy responding to a failure to create the sophisticated measuring equipment common to advanced systems of distribution. Here the physics of pressure and counterbalance speak to the precarious equilibrium of individual freedom and state intervention.
Juxtaposed with the mobiles are a series of works inspired by Soviet-era designs and materials, mixed with traditional elements such as caning, rattan and latticework. The artwork titles bear the names of important, utopian Cuban architects and designers from the 1960s and 1970s whose aspirations were founded on the economic hardship of the communist regime and the associated stigma of bourgeois taste: María Victoria, Reinaldo, Galván, and more.
Generation, a short film made in collaboration with Cuban filmmaker Carlos Lechuga, completes the fictional decorator-designer’s path through the unrealized dream. Languid and melancholic, it suggests a state of mind as much as of place. Here the architects, designers and decorators of the Modernist movement are played by the generation of artists and designers shaping Cuba today, offering perhaps the hope that history does not repeat itself.
The Decorator’s Home is a continuation of a project launched at the Havana Biennial 2019 at Centro de Arte Contemporáneo Wilfredo Lam, from April 12 – May 12. The opening reception will be held at UTA Artist Space on Friday, May 31, from 6-8PM, with a special performance by Seu Jorge at 7PM.
ABOUT MARCO CASTILLO
Marco Castillo (b. 1971, Cuba), in his previous work as a member of Los Carpinteros, is represented in important national and international public and private collections, such as the Tate Modern, London, Great Britain; Museum of Modern Art, New York City, New York, USA; Guggenheim Museum, New York, USA; National Museum of Fine Arts, Havana, Cuba; Center of Art “Reina Sofia” Museum, Madrid, Spain; Thyssen – Bornemisza Contemporary Art, Vienna, Austria; National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, Canada; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France; Daros Foundation, Zürich, Switzerland; Ludwig Forum für Internationale Kunst, Aachen, Germany; Victoria & Albert Museum, London, UK; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, California, USA (LACMA), Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, Canada.
ABOUT NEVILLE WAKEFIELD
Neville Wakefield is a modern curator interested in exploring the ways in which art behaves outside of institutional contexts. This interest led him to co-found Elevation1049, a site-specific biennial in Gstaad, Switzerland, while his role as artistic director of Desert X has been instrumental in shaping the biennial that attracted over 200,000 visitors to the Coachella Valley region of Southern California. As senior curatorial advisor for PS1 MoMA and curator of Frieze Projects, he gained a reputation for challenging the conditions that shape art in both commercial and non-commercial contexts. He has worked extensively with international institutions, including the Schaulager Switzerland where he curated the Matthew Barney retrospective Prayer Sheet with the Wound and the Nail.
ABOUT UTA ARTIST SPACE
UTA Artist Space is an exhibition venue in the heart of Beverly Hills that is committed to showcasing art by globally recognized talent. Since its establishment in 2016, UTA Artist Space has presented notable exhibitions by artists including Ai Weiwei, Jake and Dinos Chapman, Derrick Adams, Petra Cortright, The Haas Brothers, and Larry Clark. For more information, please visit utaartistspace.com.
PRESS CONTACTS
Adam Abdalla
President, Cultural Counsel
Jill Robinson
Senior Account Executive, Cultural Counsel