The invisible cage. A retrospective of Víctor Castillo

Víctor Castillo (Santiago, 1973) presents, for the first time in Chile, a retrospective of his work, consisting mainly of paintings and a few sculptures drawn from various collections spanning two decades of his artistic career.

The exhibition space, which evokes the design of an amusement park, also includes an archive of documents, objects, and publications that chronicles the career of one of Chile’s most internationally recognized living artists.

Through his acrylic and oil paintings on canvas, as well as his most recent charcoal drawings, he presents a body of work that international critics associate with Pop Surrealism and Lowbrow Art. Of these closely related artistic movements, the former (coined during his years in Spain) refers to the convergence of a dream world with mass culture, while the latter (predominantly used during his time living in the United States) refers to the influences of the Underground and its provocative aesthetic: tattoos, punk music, and street protests.

However, it is also important to recognize the specifically local influences present in his work: the color palette of summers in Chile’s southern island Chiloé, the style of the cartoonist Coré on the old covers of Peneca magazine, and a childhood spent under a dictatorship, during which he escaped reality through television cartoons.

Víctor Castillo thus constructs a visual universe where the fantastic and the sinister intertwine, through a range of tones, characters, and motifs that place us in a disturbing childlike setting. Through these works, the artist lifts the veil on the system that dominates the world and lays bare its structural violence, while humanity still tries nervously and knowing that it may be futile to lead a normal life.