QUEMANDO LA CASA

 

The act of painting is essential to Marcos Castro's creative expression -even though he works across various media- his high-pitched color images don't seek
to imitate life but to express a transcendental symbolism charged with emotion, portraying the force of Nature and its relationship with human nature.

In his past series, he explored apocalyptic scenarios where destruction was the center. For "Quemando la Casa" (Burning Down the House), his direction
changes, allowing him to take on a new perspective. Castro employs the element of fire as the silent protagonist in scenes where the spectator has the viewpoint of being inside a house burning down while looking through windows that show an external reality of vibrant scenes of Nature. In a gestural tone, exuberant plants, rivers, and wild animals take over what looks like an abandoned civilization.

By expressing this act of destruction, he sets a renewal cycle. The regeneration is seen as a purification process where fire transforms everything it encounters;
it's the archetypal force of transmutation.

 

In Greek mythology, fire symbolizes knowledge and creativity. It embodies the divine, inaccessible to mortals until Prometheus stole it from the Gods and
gifted it to humanity.

For Carl Jung, the House symbolizes our psyche, a manifestation of the soul. Our homes are amongst the most primal of our collective symbols, our shelter,
the limit between me and "the world." In this way, burning the house down is not just an act of renewal/transformation but also the moment of tearing down the border between "I" and Nature, inner and outer, integrating that which "is not me" and moving beyond into a reality where everything is connected.
 

Quemando la Casa sparks an intense thirst for change, a revolution that occurs at the subconscious level. Like the immortal Phoenix, we can only be reborn
when nothing is left but ashes.

The exhibition proposes a sort of allegorical staging that incorporates bidimensional painting objects in a tridimensional setting, assembling an immersive environment that recalls that we are part of reality, not just actors in a deterministic existence but active co-creators.

Castro's imagery, surrealist in its strangeness and intensity, seeks to start a conversation about humanity's ecological and existential crisis. Philosophers have always asked themselves if humankind can be understood as divorced from Nature, and the answer has always been no.

In this series, Marcos Castro seeks to reconcile this separation.