David Castillo Annex: Tom Scicluna, Pinched
David Castillo Gallery: Guido Albi-Marini, Calor

Tom Scicluna
Pinched
David Castillo Annex
2234 NW 2nd Avenue, Miami
February 14 – March 7, 2009
Reception February 14, 7-10
David Castillo Annex is proud to present Tom Scicluna’s site-specific installation, Pinched.

Working with construction-ready materials, Scicluna implements an I-beam arrangement as a productive pause. The sprawling composition animates the exhibition space, dominating the floor as imminently as the financial real estate crisis in the US, and as carefully as the Bauhaus movement sought social redemption in the rigor of aestheticism. The complacency of Scicluna’s exaggerated arrangement, seemingly grafted from the site itself, also bears traces of ironic Absurdism; the viewer’s capacity to swallow art as architecture becomes both graceful in its democracy and frightening in its unquestioned breadth.

Scicluna believes in situational place and artistic situation. By harnessing the meeting of materials, the ability of mass to displace mass, the coerciveness of perspective, and the potential energy of balance, Pinched engages sensationalists and scrutinizers with the acutest attention.

Tom Scicluna was born in London in 1974 and lives and works in Miami. Recent group shows include Rendez-Vous ’08, Musée d’Art Contemporain de Lyon, France, in conjunction with the Moore Space European Residency Program; Tuttle, David Castillo Gallery (2008); and Shadows, Disappearances and Illusions, Miami Art Museum (2008).

Guido Albi-Marini
Calor
David Castillo Gallery
2234 NW 2nd Avenue, Miami
February 14 – March 7, 2009
Reception February 14, 7-10 pm

In the David Castillo Gallery, Guido Albi- Marini’s Calor philosophises that the eye of the camera sees what exists, while the eye of the artist sees meanings as unrefined as sugar in its raw form. The documentary, taciturn power of Albi-Marini’s images give voice to traders of the Muslim Agricultural Revolution, slave laborers of the Caribbean, and steam engineers of the Industrial Age. Sugar has crystallized the history of the world’s greatest advancements and atrocities. “Calor,” the entomology of ” calorie,” connects to “heat” in Latin and related languages. Sugar’s harmful caloric makeup and contentious politics remain hot topics that cannot be destroyed as easily as farmers burn sugarcane to reduce the amount of leafy material before processing.

Albi-Marini’s photographs not only call to mind destruction and vigilance, but the fuel of economy, consumption of resources, expense of labor, and exchange of culture. From its ashes rise universal enjoyment and consequence. Albi-Marini allows the viewer to understand sugarcane as a perennial, continuing to colonize contemporary society’s emotional psyche and physical addictions. Historical and medical trends seem to urge that burning sugarcane should be understood as an act of protest. However, from the “sugar nips” of 18th century London to the Pez dispensers of today, sugar continues to coat the palms of the people, and the people remain in the palms of corporate hands.

Guido Albi-Marini was born in Naples, Italy in 1955 and lives and works primarily in Miami. Albi-Marini was a pupil of the Neapolitan salons frequented by artists and architects during the 1960s and 70s. His work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, and is in many important public and private collections.

David Castillo Gallery announces John Bailly’s Bloody Noses and Cracked Crowns in the Project Room. Bailly’s oil paintings and works on paper accumulate physical manifestations of states of mind. Often brooding and tumultuous, Bailly’s work seems to suggest the struggle for communication, fluidity of identity, and human empathy through a dense language of bridges, cityscapes, ancient geography, and self-annihilation. Ultimately, Bailly uses abstraction and Dadaist technique to empower the viewer to construct meaning in a world where objects and events possess no true nature.

John Bailly was born in Slough, Buckinghamshire, and raised in Paris, Aix-les-Bains, Long Island, Lyon, and Miami. He received his MFA in painting and printmaking from Yale University in 1993, and is a Fellow of The Honors College at Florida International University. His work has been exhibited at University of Maine Museum of Art, Museum of Contemporary Art Jacksonville, Texas State University, and other institutions throughout the US. In 2006 Bailly was awarded the South Florida Cultural Consortium Fellowship for Visual and Media Artists, and a State of Florida Individual Artist Grant.

About David Castillo

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. David Castillo Gallery opened in 2005 after transforming a dilapidated warehouse in Miami, Florida, USA into a 5,000 square foot gallery, project room and annex.
Gallery Hours
Tuesday – Saturday, 10 am – 5pm and by appointment

David Castillo Gallery
info@davidcastillogallery.com
+1 305 573 8110 Telephone
http://www.davidcastillogallery.com
2234 NW 2nd Avenue
Miami, Florida 33127
United States