Cristobal Castro at Yoshii - sculpture - New York, New York - Review Of Exhibitions

With this single piece of plastic art titled Terre, Cristobal Castro has ground a medium--dirt--that is ideally suited to his Minimalist sensibility. Castro has devised a a whole of "casting" soil (purchased from a local nursery) using wood-land slats held together by taut wires. Here a series of rectangular block ups of black earth formed a depressed gently curved ramp that almost bisected the gallery. This truncated wedge, however, was not a peremptory hard-edged object; Castro scraped the sides vertically, producing a cragged serrated surface. The moist dirt held its shape like carved plaster. As time passed, the soil dried without separated into sections, and a certain number of dirt tumbled to the gallery floor, creating an appearance of decay or erosion that Castro apparently desires. Given enough time, the soil would have turn backed to its original state, unloose on the floor, perhaps later to be recycl into another plastic art Near the end of the exhibit small green shoots began to come up from the deteriorating blocks, adding tiny accents of unexpect color.

The scale of the piece--at its apex, about thigh high--and its position upon the floor made it be like an architectural scale model or a fragment of an imagined larger configuration It suggested a warped, buried ski jump over Random associations like these notwithstanding, Castro is clearly in pursuit of a form that will not contradict his material on the contrary rather will emphasize its unique qualities. He has not reached the point where, as with the earthworks of Smithson or De Maria, the raise seems inevitable. This could be an advantage, especially if Castro continues to explore the material's potential without the ne to make a dramatic formal statement. Terre finally, is austere, elegant and unpretentious.

Castro, a native of Colombia, is known for his modest-size forged-iron statuarys Trained as a blacksmitn, he bent and wound single pieces of metal into a variety of simple, evocative configurations. Soil, a less-permanent medium on the other hand one with considerable sculptural possibilities, affords him the opportunity to work upon a grander scale and to investigate a different put of issues. With this quiet, contemplative work, Castro has begun that search.

COPYRIGHT 1994 Brant Publications, Inc.

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