The prominent artist Alfonso Castillo, an Argentine resident in Guatemala, has just inaugurated a magnificent exhibition on the Paseo de las Artes Duhau that synthesizes several aspects of his vast production.
“Tours” is the title of the exhibition by prominent Argentine photographer Alfonso Castillo currently on display at the Paseo de las Artes Duhau since it is precisely a brief tour of its vast production developed both in our country and abroad.
Founder of the Alfonso and Luz Castillo Foundation, Arta reference space around photography and new technologies of contemporary artistic production, its works are part of private collections in Europe, the United States and Latin America, in addition to the National Museum of Fine Arts of Argentina and the Presidential Museum of the Guatemala City, where he has resided for some years.
In the manner of a chef, Castillo has a personal recipe for taking photography in a practical and simple way: “We take a generous piece of reality, as much as possible, fresh or collected with our own eyes. We look for the area that seems best to us and we cut it out, covering it with glass so that time does not alter it until the final moment.. We add small amounts of illusions, half-truths, pleasure, anxiety, curiosity, passion, surprise. She stirs it all around, mixing it with some perspiration. Then it is put in the oven and when it reaches its point, a pinch of omnipotence is added and it is served.”
In the presentation text, the artist and personal friend, Eduardo Medici, points out that for Castillo the privileged moment is not the moment of taking the photo but the moment afterwards when, urged by the need to express some thought or sensation, he must choose between those fragments of reality that surprise him for the second time. This choice allows the artist to make visible the forces that structure reality rather than reality itself.
The exhibition tour constitutes a selection of several of the series addressed by Castillo: there is the architecture, the city represented by concrete geometry and like all his work, crossed by the eternal dialogue between photography and painting.
Glass buildings where other buildings are reflected in an undulating way, stripped of all humanity. The series of repetitions, lamps, bags that can be made of cement or food, plastic crates to transport the latter, stairs, fragments of buildings or constructions emblematic of his travels around the world, windows through which no one looks out, balconies without no flowers, graves.
You can also play contemporary “ruins” through peeling walls, become an environmentalist by showing burned trees or the greening of nature. There is also no shortage of human beings, the homeless person sitting on a bench in some New York neighborhood or self-portraits with backgrounds of architectural fragments.
But The passionate photographer allows himself some licenses and, going beyond the strictly geometric construction of an image that becomes blurry, photographs autumn tree leaves.s, also colorful, almost transparent flowers that in another compositional display he will replicate on the mirrored walls of buildings, returning to them a pinch of lost humanity.
Susan Sontag (1933-2004) author of the famous book “About photography” quotes Mallarmé when he states “that in the world everything exists to culminate in a book,” Sontag says: “Today everything exists to culminate in a photograph.”. In addition to being his passion and his way of being in the world, Castillo in his being as a photographer pursues an illusion that he transmits to us to accompany him on his journey. (Av. Alvear 1661. Free admission. Closing on April 28.)
Source: Ambito
I am an author and journalist who has worked in the entertainment industry for over a decade. I currently work as a news editor at a major news website, and my focus is on covering the latest trends in entertainment. I also write occasional pieces for other outlets, and have authored two books about the entertainment industry.
