David Castillo Gallery celebrates a pivotal moment during Art Basel this year, with trailblazing news: for the first tie in more than a decade, Art Basel Miami Beach has vetted a gallery from Miami into the exclusive Galleries Section, where only the leading 200 galleries in the world are showcased. The gallery’s singular success story is exemplified by being chosen for this honor, and this year the stars are aligned.
The gallery’s booth at Art Basel (Booth F26) presents a stellar group of artists from throughout the U.S. and abroad, featuring works in sculpture, painting, photography, installation, and paper by the artists Belkis Ayon, Sanford Biggers, Adler Guerrier, Quizqueya Henriquez, Pepe Mar, Glexis Novoa, Xaviera Simmons, Shinique Smith, and Vaughn Spann. This marks the gallery’s sixth year in the art fair and its first in the established Galleries section.
David Castillo at his art gallery with dog (Harry), works by Pepe Mar. Photo by Mateo Serna Zapata. Courtesy David Castillo Gallery.
David Castillo is recognized in the art industry for his long-term nurturing of artists, many represented by Castillo since the beginning of their careers.
“Our artists help to shape the most current vision of contemporary art,” says David Castillo. “My passion for their artistic evolution, and our gallery’s singular trajectory of success, have led up to this pivotal year. We are thrilled to have been invited to the Galleries section at Art Basel.”
Kalup Linzy, Conversations Wit De Curen: IX XI XII Days of Our Ego
During Miami Art Week, the gallery’s headquarters on Lincoln Road (ideally located near the main Art Basel location at the Convention Center), will also present the new group exhibition The Strangeness Will Wear Off, featuring the artists Melissa Brown, Cynthia Cruz, Maria de los Angeles RJ, Natalie Frank, Tomashi Jackson, Pepe Mar, Jillian Mayer, Robert Melee, Eamon Ore-Giron, Shinique Smith, and Wendy White. The opening reception is on Saturday, December 8th, from 7:00-10:00 p.m., located at Lincoln Road on Miami Beach.
The Strangeness Will Wear Off characterizes the enduring legacy of Modernism as a radical and boundary-pushing form into the contemporary moment. The exhibition probes at how artists break with conventions in uncompromising ways, while borrowing pointedly from the past, the new twenty first century avant garde that looks to history as a catalyst for what is to come.
Eamon Ore-Giron, Infinite Regress LV, 2018, Flashe on linen. Courtesy David Castillo Gallery.
More about the artists at David Castillo Gallery’s Booth in Art Basel 2018:
Belkis Ayon’s visual vocabulary is sober yet sumptuous, capturing haunting ghost-like figures in stark contrasts of bright whites and deep blacks.
Deeply enmeshed within the origins, rituals and teachings of Afro-Cuban religions, the moody penumbral magic of Ayon’s work carries with it the mystical legacies that so fascinated her before her untimely death.
Sanford Biggers, Parallaxadaisical, 2017, antique quilt birch plywood, gold leaf. Courtesy David Castillo Gallery.
Sanford Biggers plays with the broad scales of time and culture in works that collage histories both far and recent.
His floor sculpture marries his interest in participatory works and geometry: while his quilt constructions tell the uneasy histories of America’s violent racial past through the aspirations of Afrofuturism.
Alder Guerrier, Untitled (longevity has its place), 2017, graphite, color pencil, enamel paint and solvent transfer on paper. Courtesy David Castillo Gallery.
Adler Guerrier’s work across collage and print mines the cultural make-up of Miami–and of the artist’s own background as a Haitian American living in one of the largest centers of the Haitian diaspora–drawing out themes of collectivizing belonging, seeking refuge, and claiming place.
Quisqueya Henriquez, Lyubov Popova/Jackie Winsor, 2014, inkjet print on Dibond and a frame inside a frame. Courtesy David Castillo Gallery.
Quisqueya Henriquez boldly claims the history of art for her own, actively mining and recombining references from Conceptualism and the greater lineage of Modernism to reframe this often staid history along new terms. She inserts herself into pictorial modes that largely excluded the voices of those who are Other: women and Latin Americans.
Pepe Mar, Checkerboard, 2018. Photo by Zach Balber/Courtesy David Castillo Gallery.
Pepe Mar’s fabric paintings tell of a contemporary folklore between past and present, place, and time.
His curiously collaged works that draw from the artist’s own oeuvre; much of the fabrics used in these pieces are printed from photographs from along Mar’s own fifteen-year career, creating new contexts for these past works from combining and re-combining these imageries.
Glexis Novoa, Timba, 2017, graphite on Carrara marble (marble recovered from Havana.) Courtesy David Castillo Gallery.
Glexis Novoa sources fragments of Carrara marble from the crumbling edificies of Cuban buildings and draws upon them aspirational images of future cities; grand and gleaming architectures in stark contrast to the current realities of Cuban life. Novoa imagines urban infrastructure as a broad political message and one that pulls at the opposing tensions of what is and what could be.
Xaviera Simmons, Velvet, 2018, acrylic on wood. Installation view, Renaissance Society, Chicago/Courtesy David Castillo Gallery.
Xaviera Simmons’ new body of text paintings, photographs, and sculptural furniture play with ideas of nomadism and the enduring legacies on which the contemporary American narratives is founded; histories of racial inequality, perseverance and unyielding calls for change. Simmons often inserts herself into her works, aligning with the disparate pasts to obscure the boundaries between them and now, us and them.
Shinique Smith, Sometimes I wonder, 2016, acrylic, ink, fabric, collage, ribbon and objects on canvas over wood panel. Courtesy David Castillo Gallery.
Shinique Smith’s body of work takes form across modes of production that collage found objects, second-hand clothing, and references to the flows of global commerce; how goods are produced in the Global South, transported to the West and then used, discarded, and returned to those countries from which they originated for recycling. Her paintings are often of sweeping swirling forms incorporating Eastern calligraphic traditions.
Vaughn Spann, Siren, 2018, polymer paint, dye, prisma marker, fabric, terry cloth on stretcher bars. Courtesy David Castillo Gallery.
Vaughn Spann creates evocative and at times deeply personal paintings that blend abstract formalism with the today’s uneasy social nuance.
The visual vocabulary of his Dalmatian series, which brings together black-and-white patters, examines the shifting associations of various geometries and forms across his childhood, recent history and deeper past.
More about the David Castillo Gallery:
Wendy White, Jeart (Mello Yello)
David Castillo Gallery opened over thirteen years ago under sole ownership after transforming a dilapidated warehouse in Miami, Florida into a 5,000 square foot gallery. After a decade in the Wynwood Arts district, David Castillo relocated for its second decade to Miami Beach’s Lincoln Road and has produced more than 116 fine art exhibitions to date. The gallery’s focus is on conceptual curatorial models as they relate to art historical, cultural, and personal investigations of identity. The gallery works with artists committed to the integrity of their individual histories and studio practices as agents of contemporary climate.
Since opening in Miami in 2005, David Castillo Gallery has become one of the nation’s preeminent galleries in the identification, development, and presentation of groundbreaking artists of color and queer artists, spearheading a far-reaching national and international impact on cultural and critical spaces.
Jillian Mayer, I Am Your Grandma
Gallery Represented Artists:
Sanford Biggers, Kate Gilmore, Adler Guerrier, Lyle Ashton Harris, Quisqueya Henriquez, Kalup Linzy, Belkis Ayon, Pepe Mar, Jillian Mayer, Robert Melee, Glexis Novoa, Xaviera Simmons, Shinique Smith, Wendy White.
The gallery as effectively advocated for the inclusion of its artists in dozens of museum solo shows and hundreds of museum group exhibitions, including: The Museum of Modern Art (New York); MCA Chicago; Fondazione Trussardi (Milan); Harvard University (Cambridge); ICA Boston; The Nasher (Durham); National Museum of Women in Arts (D.C.); Barnes Collection (Philadelphia); Walker Art Center (Minneapolis); MFA Houston; MoMa P.S.1 (New York); Whitney Museum (New York); Metropolitan Museum (New York); The Guggenheim (New York); and the American Academy in Rome among others.
David Castillo holds degrees in History and Art History from Yale University and the Angelicum in Rome. Since 2000, he has dealt in important Latin American, European, and American secondary market works. Castillo has held positions at museums, including the Yale University Art Gallery’s American Decorative Arts curatorial department. He continues to assist private clients in building their collections in addition to managing David Castillo Gallery And has lectured on various topics in art.
Vaughn Spann, Canyon Run
