Victor Castillo
Victor Hernández Castillo, who lives and works in Mexico City, is a printmaker who specializes in large etchings and linocuts. He was trained at the National School of Plastic Arts in Mexico with further studies in Poland and France. He has presented solo exhibitions in Poland and Mexico and has also exhibited his work in groups shows in those 2 countries as well as Canada, Cuba, Norway, Japan, Germany, Bulgaria, Italy and the Czech Republic. He was awarded the Jean Claude Bergeron Gallery Purchase Award in OSA’s First International Miniature Print Exhibition in April. Mr. Castillo’s provocative and emotional work is based in the traditions and aesthetics of grotesque art.
The process showed in my graphics, which involves concepts as web as techniques, is to compare with traveling, where image and play are current issues. This process also includes the formal lines which gives structure in space and form to each one of my works. When I talk about image and play I am thus pointing to an anemic and emotional impulse which brings us a graphic script undoubtedly related with poetry.
My graphic creations have a metaphoric meaning, thus in my opinion, it is very important to the observer to make his/her own interpretation and own narrative. In some cases these might become anecdote. Under the rules of grotesque aesthetic I emphasize too much on ironic and hilarious fantasies where humans share their beings with animals, creating hybrid forms; thus we talk about anthropomorphous animals, imaginary beasts, animals and fantastic cross breeding which build up various poetic visual metaphors.
Expressiveness in graphic figures is obtained throughout metal engraving and it comes to its most capacity of expression due to the character and speed of the line. In Xylography the different amounts of black and white spots are handled with spontaneity creating the expression of gesture.
Finally, my current works are close to the oneiric productions which are far away from the limits of human logic”.
Volatilla is a series of prints made between 2007 and 2009, on the metamorphosis of the ephemeral. This conceptual approach led me to explore new figurative and iconographic forms in a traditional medium, lino printing. Its basic character allowed me to develop the obvious spontaneity of printmaking in black and white, with the clear intention to give this discipline an important place in contemporary printmaking.
Volatilla, which comes from the word ‘fowl’ in Spanish (or French), is a ‘flying animalia’; this fantastic zoology offers, in its formal structure and its composition, an ironic portrait of our changing reality.
The interest for the grotesque, as a mode of graphic representation, distorts and disfigures natural forms in which human features can be seen through the animal metamorphosis.
The figurative baroque in the dynamic and fragmented compositions of this print series, as well as the richness in the greys generated by the lines and the deep blacks, produce an ambiance of instability and chaos, specific to this stigmatized reality. The poetics of the grotesque, present in the narrative qualities of the prints, aims to generate in spectators their own interpretative stories. The process of distorting and disfiguring is progressive in some of the works- from the movement in the calligraphy of the line print in white., – and in others, the distortion remains dormant in the deep blacks.
