Image Gallery & Bio

About the exhibition
The title Time after Diamonds refers at two series of works I have been working since late 2007 till now. The 8 photographs and the video screening are a selection from the series Offerings and Possessions and The Passage of Time.

Offerings and Possessions conceals about our desire to posses even material things or even people. As it usual in Del Castillo’s works, the reversible action of the reflection appears as looking for ”equilibrium.” In this case, the success of possession depends on the offer by oneself.

The Magpie, a woman completely covered by sea of pearls, a dress made of 12,000 pearls; in the photo a magpie invigilate the reclined woman.

The Anthill, photograph of a woman holding one bronze piece made by Del Castillo, in the shape of the anthill or respectively a human organ. The golden shine is the feeling of desperate desire that reminds us the tale of the Midas king.

The Garden, a woman blinded by a mirrored silver sheet, that reflects the photograph that she holds above her that reveal complicated state between what is shown as artificial and natural flowers, with the hands caught in the act of taking away the flowers while the same time it appear it is taking away body of the woman at the same time.

The Bed, a photograph is the key that links the evolution from the worry about materiality to the worry of eternity.

Del Castillo has built for this photograph, 33 ceramic skulls with golden glazed. Each of the crane shell is removed and filled red velvet cushion, making one bed once you have all of them together. The woman in the photograph is sleeping on top of this bed. As it happened with the ancient tribes that they gain the cranes of their enemies to preserve their powers, this woman sleeps on top of the cranes, that even they are not real ones; they give us the idea of death. She sleeps on top of one Vanitas as if the time doesn’t affect her.

Recorridos, a photograph made of various collages of maps where the artist has resided the last 10 years due to her art practice. One red line links all these places. This red line is actually one sculpture made by her that is one red layered cooper stair that runs around one wooden broom connected to a wooden dustpan.

In transit, a photograph taken directly inside one elevator, where one girl is levitating and the only part that connects her to the floor is her hair that is linked to a sand clock situated on the floor of the elevator.

Matryoshka is a work consists both an installation and a performance, breaking the boundaries between disciplines in art of theatre, visual art and music concerts.

The original idea was directed and created by Naia del Castillo, where she served producer, artistic director for the project and creator for all the visual elements of the piece, photographs, scenery, objects…

In collaboration with vocalist and performer Gunnlaug Thorvaldsdottir, who brought life to Matryoshka through her unique voice and performance.

Matryoshka emerges from an eternal circular movement; expresses life cycle of unstoppable fertility channeled this motion by a large powerful doll while act of defiance expresses in form of shelter, are concealed with half of the body hidden by hairs. Her feet are anchored and frozen however from her ankle to head is unrestraint and free for movement. The layered of different dresses bound her as she slowly releases and undresses like a Matryoshka doll, while the music and voice accompany this transition of unfolding. In a continuous destruction and reconstruction, we trespass the boundaries of concealment, growth, fullness, death and renaissance.

This exhibition is organized as part of the “La noche de Luna Llena festival” with the support of the The Museum of Contemporary Art Esteban Vicente in Segovia and Segovia 2016.

Germán Herrera (b. Mexico City, 1957) has had a long career as a photographer, working in both the tradition of the street photographer and as a constructor of symbolic images. The works on exhibition here, produced since 2001, represent an artist who has established a mature, richly eloquent voice. Using digital technology he merges images of an array of common and enigmatic objects, natural elements, historic references, and textures and atmospheres. In doing so, he conjures a world that is at once wholly real and imagined – a chronicle of the subconscious. Many photographers working with the formats of constructed imagery or photomontage do so with a keen sense of intentionality, as a means of conveying a specific statement or idea. Herrera, in contrast, relies greatly on intuition and emotion, more interested in the possibility of locating meaning outside the arenas or pure intellect and reason.

Herrera has spoken of this body of work as a “book of self,” an expression of the totality of the beliefs, feelings, fears, and myths that reside within him. But in evoking a personal sphere he ultimately creates spaces for the contemplation of the universal. Each image functions as a kind of mirror that offers the potential to recognize something of ourselves; distinct interpretations or memories may be sparked for each viewer. Many of these works have an oneiric quality, as if envisioning fragments (a face or limb, a weathered surface, an old artwork) recalled from dreams but that remain tantalizingly beyond full comprehension. With his resonant mode of image-making, Herrera suggests that these ambiguous forms, and such realms as discontinuity, transience, obscurity, and even emptiness, may be fertile ground for creative transformation. In Herrera’s hands, photography becomes a medium for entering liminal spaces – between the physical and the psychological, the knowable and the unknowable – elusive territories that symbolize the possibility of grasping the metaphysical in the everyday world around us.

Elizabeth Ferrer © 2009

Visit German Herrera Website

( click here to learn more).

Flowers have to be one of the most photographed subjects imaginable. I mean, how can you not like flowers, right? Everyone with a camera is tempted to take a whack at them. I can recall pointing my brand-new Pentax 35mm SLR at my wife’s day lilies nearly 20 years ago and burning through some rolls. When those K64 slides came back I was underwhelmed by the results. My wife glanced over my shoulder at the light box and muttered, “Maybe you should try birds or something.” Other folks have obviously had more success. In the last two years “brand-name” photographers including Howard Schatz, Barbara Bordnick and Joyce Tenneson have all done books of flower images. Current fashion appears to favor close-ups of huge drooping blossoms, or sepia toned images of dried up and dying blooms. The books do seem to fly off the shelves, so there’s obviously a market for them.

Given the ubiquitious, done-to-death nature of flower photos, it takes some work to do something creative. Scott Peck’s gorgeous series of flowers frozen in ice is one unique effort. Tony Mendoza’s new work, titled simply Flowers, is another. Mendoza is a Cuban-born photographer probably best known for Ernie, a book of photos of the cat he shared a loft with in NYC. Published in 1982, it acquired something of a cult following. The images are genuinely witty, in an Elliott Erwitt sort of way.

Flowers is a new direction for Mendoza. The introduction explains how he began photographing a community garden tended by his wife, finding that the zero incremental cost of digital exposures made it painless to experiment. The resulting book of images has a consistent style and æsthetic that kind of grew on me. I must confess that I find most flower photography saccharine to the point of nausea. Mendoza’s work is different. The flowers are all photographed from ground level—i.e. from below—with relatively short focal lengths. All are lit with flash, most about a half stop to a stop “hotter” than the sky behind them. The resulting images are almost disorienting, sort of a “Land of the Giants” perspective where the occasional passing bumble bee looks the size of a beagle. Some of the flowers are clearly past their prime, others immaculate. The level of well-lit detail demonstrates how bizarre many plants are when you really study them closely.

As a physical object the book is impressive for its dimensions, 12.2 x17.6″. The fifty plates are therefore large enough to have serious impact; the color and detail really hit the eye. Some care has obviously been taken in laying out the images; the color palette and tonality of facing pages harmonize perfectly. The only negative is a quirk of the printing process; the plates demonstrate bronzing when seen at a glare angle, though they look fine under normal illumination. This is a problem familiar to anyone who’s ever tried printing on glossy paper with a pigment inkjet. Mendoza’s witty introduction and afterward add a bit of perspective to the project.

If you love flowers and gardening, this book is worth a look for its unique take on the subject. It may inspire you to dust off your flash and look at your own backyard garden again. It also demonstrates once again the impact of a consistent body of work, perhaps inspiring folks to organize a portfolio of their own. And that’s not a bad thing.

A random encounter on Drew Street with a discarded Houston Yellow Pages was the primary inspiration for this project.  After photographing that book on a downtown sidewalk, I began the search for more books, and more methods to change their appearance.

My process is an attempt to blur the line between object, sculpture, and photography. As I begin, I consider the contents of each volume.  I didn’t spend more than a few seconds on “Windows 95,” but the “New Century Dictionary of the English Language,” is a treasure that, because of its fascinating illustrations, and archaic examples, saved it from taking on a new form.   Sculpting segued to thoughts on obsolescence and the relevance of libraries in this century.

My photographs are primarily a documentation of a physical evolution.  I have changed a common object into sculpture in a state of flux.  The way we choose to research and find information is also in an evolution.   I hope to raise questions about these changes, the ephemeral and fragile nature in which we now obtain knowledge, and the future of books.

Cara Barer

]]> http://www.desantosgallery.com/rafael-navarro-photography/feed/ 0 http://www.desantosgallery.com/chen-changfen-photograph/ http://www.desantosgallery.com/chen-changfen-photograph/#comments Sat, 07 Apr 2007 13:46:11 +0000 admin http://www.desantosgallery.com/?p=277 A Note About The Artist

Born in 1941, Chen Changfen became a professional photographer at 18, and six years later, in 1965, photographed the Great Wall of China for the first time. Although he has continually photographed the wall over the last 30 years, the project was most actively pursued after the Cultural Revolution when he needed a restorative project. He decided that the Wall was a creation of beauty, a potential source of national pride, a physical challenge, and the basis of endless aesthetic, philosophical and historical ponderings for an intelligent, talented, and driven man. As Chen read, explored, and continued to photograph the Wall, his pictures evolved in distinct stages.

At a time when China is rapidly entering the global community and China´s cities are abandoning traditional architecture and neighborhoods to build glass and steel, international style skyscrapers, Chen Changfen is making art deeply rooted in traditional values. Chen´s images are informed by years of walking the Wall in all seasons and conditions of light and weather. At 65, he scrambles upright and surefooted along the often dangerously deteriorated Wall. He has returned to some sections of the Wall over 100 times, not always to photograph. This is what he calls “keeping the placid mood,” which is essential for his work. This solitary and contemplative approach yields different images than one would make while walking the streets of densely populated, quickly changing cities. Given the rapid changes in China, his respect for the Wall and his contemplative photographs are out of sync with art by other, internationally embraced, contemporary Chinese artists, whose works are more experimental, idiosyncratic, and purposefully subversive of the status quo. Younger artists have been more inclined to question the Wall as a worthy symbol of modern China. In Chinese contemporary art since the 1980s the meaning of the Wall has evolved relative to each artist´s embrace or rejection of prior perceptions and Chen´s imbuing the pictures with meanings based on traditional Chinese philosophies is in sharp contrast to those who see the Wall as a manifestation of the Chinese conservatism that blocked China from the outside world in the past and remains as a symbol of that conservatism today.

Besides his intention to honor the wall as a great accomplishment of engineering and the human spirit, other traditional values that have been important to Chen are the philosophical religion Taoism and the aesthetic tradition of Chinese painting.

By choosing his viewpoint, he makes the Wall look whole or reduced to rubble. Sometimes it dominates the picture; other times one must carefully scan the landscape to find its traces. When using color film, Chen relishes the orange glow from late afternoon light that sets the stone and bricks afire. In other images, he draws more attention to the trees that now grow mid wall and densely along its sides. He uses light to emphasize the Wall or shadows to obscure it, depending on the components or relationships he wishes to reveal. The more one reads about the wall and experiences it personally, the more one understands the depth of perceptions embedded in each picture and how much knowledge can be perceived through his vision beyond the sheer aesthetic pleasures offered.

Written by Anne Tucker