Francisco González Castro: does not say «I», but does «I»: Bodies, Limits & Transgressions
April 13 – June 8, 2024
Opening Reception Saturday, April 13
- Members Preview 5 – 6 pm
- Artist Talk 6 – 6:30 pm
- Public Reception 6 – 8 pm
Mixing genres of video, performance, and drawing, Francisco González Castro’s work examines problems related to territorial borders, social inequalities, and bodily transgressions. The project title refers to German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche’s (1844-1900) existentialist quote that begins, “The body is a great intelligence,” (Thus Spoke Zarathustra, 1883), and infers that the human body and soul are one. This title is illuminated in Castro’s own artistic philosophy, which confronts the body, people who reject the body, and how the body is approached as subject and identity. Castro’s personal bodily transgressions and tests of endurance are vehicles for his discourse about geographic landscapes and political borders. It is within this integration of life-and-art, body-and-spirit, that we intend to immerse the audience in this physically ambitious and psychologically profound exhibition by Castro at Coconino Center for the Arts.
The exhibition will commence with a comprehensive multi-media exhibition of seminal works the artist has produced over the past 10 years. Using a variety of formats and techniques including performance, drawing, and video-performance; and approaches to problems related to territory, social issues, borders, and eroticism; the exhibition will tackle subjects that question the body, our limits, and the implications of transgressing those limits. The collection will include past performative works the artist made while in residency in Flagstaff (2018, 2020), in collaboration with artist Lucy Quezada, on the physical challenges and mental endurance migrants face while navigating the U.S./Mexico borderlands, along with various other collaborations. The exhibition will propose formal and meaningful connections built from the relationship between the various works.
For the first three weeks of the exhibition, Castro will reside in Flagstaff and engage the gallery space at CCA as his working studio. Creating new work pertaining to borders, he will be responding to, building upon, altering, and departing from the initial installation. As a living exhibition, the space will continually be in flux. Visitors to the gallery will observe and engage with Castro in his studio work, and as the installation evolves with the addition of new work, they are invited to regularly return to the gallery to experience the changing exhibition.
