Marco Castillo: The Hands of the Collector

A Modernist Regime: The Contemporary Cuban Lens

As part of A Modernist Regime: The Contemporary Cuban Lens, the solo exhibition Marco Castillo: The Hands of the Collector features several bodies of work by the artist and prolific collector of Cuban mid-century design that he initially started to amass while working as part of the artist collective Los Carpinteros (1992–2018). Castillo incorporates the aesthetics derived from Cuban modernism in his practice to resurrect Cuban design history and to critique the oppression by the government against artists, designers, and intellectuals in Cuba. Many of the artworks are named after modernist Cuban architects and designers in homage to this forgotten generation of creators, including Gonzalo Córdoba, María Victoria Caignet, Iván Espín, Reinaldo Togores, Heriberto Duverger, Clara Porset, and Félix Beltrán—all of whom are featured in the companion historical exhibition, also on view at the museum, A Modernist Regime: Cuban Mid-Century Design. Castillo’s work often references the aerial view of the kind of plans that interior designers use to layout a room, but here the objects are in turbulence. The work is a freeze-frame of deconstruction, a reference to the demise of autonomy of Cuban artists and the loss of creative life under a dictatorship.

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