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Publication: Journal Santa Fe Section; Date: Sep 17, 2010; Section: Gallery Guide; Page: S8 STUDIES IN STEEL Welded sculptures resonate with multiple meanings Art Issues MALIN WILSONPOWELL For the Journal Paula Castillo’s welded steel sculptures have always had an obsessional quality. In her current exhibition at William Siegal Gallery, there is a new dimension to her obsession. For many years she has gathered, clustered, crowded and scattered repeating segments of steel discs, loops or wire. For the most part, the repetitive use of materials in her work has operated between the poles of two sculptural modes: bristling with directional, radiating energy or stabilizing energy via a grid. Castillo often combines the two impulses in one object, as in the pedestal piece titled “and from the valleys underneath” with loopy wire attached to rectangular strips of metal substrata. This sculpture reads simultaneously as inward and outward, fluffing bigger and rooted in a rigid base. A work that expresses a purely directional energy is titled “a thousand moons will quiver,” a floor piece of bundled wire fronds that spews forth and opens space. The quality that feels new in this exhibition of Castillo’s work is a sense of repose and containment, along with attention of tender and potent inbetween spaces. Although relatively small, the object titled “pasale para adentro” has a monumental simplicity as well as feeling like the heart of this exhibition. It is a metaphorical enclosure, a rusty form that the artist refers to as a “hut.” Shaped like a loaf and made from a single layer of steel lozenges, the shape is a carapace with interstices between the modules that relay an impression of protection and permeability at the same time. Somehow this strange little metal construction manages to speak of both vulnerability and strength, qualities that are often thought of as opposites. Castillo is an ambitious artist who has a lifelong history of studying human frailties and bravado. She left Belen, N.M., where she was born in 1961, for Yale University in 1979. In 1983 she completed her bachelor of science degree in Cognitive Psychology at the University of New Mexico, and in the early 1990s she received research fellowships from both the National Endowment for the Arts and National Science Foundation, in Washington, D.C. She is currently enrolled at UNM in pursuit of a master’s in fine arts degree in “Ecology, Human Communities and Contemporary Art.” Castillo wonders if “our very nature as human beings [is] limited to [an] understanding [of] the universe that is anthropocentric” and wants to explore thinking “transversally, i.e., to extend our subjectivity to include the entire world.” In addition to the cross-species intimations of her little hut, a two-part wall sculpture titled “empty maps” also seems informed by her desire to move beyond the mode of humanity as the center of the universe. Castillo regularly makes multipart pieces that are matched segments of a whole in texture and treatment, but each of the two bowed pieces of “empty maps” has an impressive individuality along with a particularly resonant duality. Another two-part wall sculpture titled “para imitarla,” while decorative and well-made, so closely resembles a pair of wings that there is not much mystery. In comparison, the relationship between the two figures in “empty maps” percolates with many possible meanings. It is an assembly of bits far greater than the sum of its parts. The “empty maps” configuration combines fierceness with delicacy in a way that recalls the 1960s welded steel and fabric sculptures by the great artist Lee Bontecou. Wielding a torch to join metals was mostly men’s business in the making of modern metal sculpture until Bontecou created her mechanistic/ organic constructions that she hung on the wall like bodies. Similarly, the two metal arches of Castillo’s “empty maps” are hung to engage viewers’ bodies. Their bellies protrude to meet us, their outside skins of little discs are sometimes degraded and reveal an inside structure of stacked wire. As much attention has gone into the construction of the inside as the outside. These complex, taut figures exude a visceral “Blade Runner” presence. Are they nonhuman or a development from Castillo’s 2006 “dos hermanos” paired figures that were much simpler variations that leaned against the wall? Brothers and kindred creatures by their nature have a charged space between them, as do these metal figures, each distinct, yet corporeally and wholly related. For the most part, the side-by-side installation of Castillo’s work with antique textiles and ancient sculptural artifacts reverberates in informative ways. The William Siegal Gallery is an exception that proves a rule broken by numerous Santa Fe galleries. In general, galleries should not mix other work into a solo installation. Usually all the work suffers. However, in this case, Castillo’s objects and carefully juxtaposed high-quality antiquities are mutually enriched. A ceramic “Feathered Deity,” Jama-Coaque Culture, Ecuador (350 BC to 1500 AD); a gorgeous “Checkerboard Mantle” from the Nasca Culture, South Coast Peru; and a weathered, metalliclooking ceramic “Xipe Toltec,” Colima Culture and Chantal, Western Mexico, resonate with Castillo’s densely packed microdot surfaces. The ancient shamanic figures whose bodies are enlivened by leopards’ spots and bird’s feathers pulse with concentrated magical power, as does the intense grid of the cloth. Castillo’s current and past exhibitions have been uneven, with some of the work slipping into the simply decorative, while others are good ideas not resolved enough to leave the studio. On this occasion it was hard to see the poignant little sculptures, “a furrow (plowed)” and “eranos animals (a un tiempo), ” that were too casually displayed on a dark tabletop. Also, the only piece painted green –– a significant part of the artist’s conception for the exhibition, as reflected in the show’s title ––was sitting in a desktop jumble. Despite these minor complaints, Castillo’s work always has enough spark, drive and intelligence to keep me returning for another look. If you go WHAT: Paula Castillo: “gray world/ green heart” WHERE: William Siegal Gallery, Railyard District, 540 S. Guadalupe St. WHEN: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday CONTACT: 505 820-3300 or www.williamsiegal.com STUDIES IN STEEL http://epaper.abqjournal.com/Repository/getFiles.asp?Style=Ol... 1 of 3 4/27/11 12:47 PM
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