marco a. castillo

Marco A. Castillo (b. 1971, Havana, Cuba) is one of the founding members of a collective named Los Carpinteros, founded in 1992 in Havana, Cuba. The group was created as an objection to individual authorship and to engage with a practice that marries architectural forms, design and art. His drawings and installations emerge from the artist's observation of material elements from our everyday life. In his work, Castillo experiments with these aspects in order to explore the relationship between the functional and the non-functional, as well as that between art and society.

Though the collective received important international recognition as a group, Castillo has also been acclaimed for his individual work. In his career as a solo artist, he has experimented with the intersection between fine arts, applied arts and the decorative arts as a means of questioning aesthetic expectations and bias. Castillo often employs elements derived from modernism and soviet designs, which he intertwines with cuban tradition in using techniques such as latticework, and materials like mahogany. His pieces are frequently named after prominent modern Cuban architects and designers –an homage to an often forgotten generation of creators.

Marco A. Castillo lives and works in Havana, Cuba, and in Madrid, Spain. Recent solo exhibitions include: Propriedad del estado, at Nara Roesler (2021), in São Paulo, Brazil; The Decorator’s Home, at UTA Artist Space (2019), in Los Angeles, USA; El susurro del palmar, at Galerie Peter Kilchmann (2018), in Zurich, Switzerland; El otro, el mismo, at KOW (2018), in Berlin, Germany; La cosa está candela, at Museo de Arte Miguel Urrutia (2017), in Bogotá, Colombia. He has also participated in numerous editions of the Havana Biennial, Havana, Cuba (2018, 2015, 2012); and in the 13th Sharjah Biennial, Beirut, Lebanon (2017). Recent group shows include: Latin American Work on Paper, at Mayor Gallery (2018), in London, UK; Everyday Poetics, at Seattle Art Museum (2017), in Seattle, USA; No Place Like Home, at Israel Museum (2017), in Jerusalem, Israel; Contingent Beauty: Contemporary Art from Latin America, at Museum of Fine Arts (2015), in Houston, USA. His works are parts of several important institutional collections such as: Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France; Centro de Arte Contemporáneo Reina Sofía, Madrid, Spain; Daros Foundation, Zurich, Switzerland; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, USA; Tate Modern, London, UK; and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, USA, amongst others.