Exhibit: Conceptual Landscapes: recent work by Castillo and Mariana Garibay

Macla: Movimiento de Arte y Cultura Latino Americana, is a wonderful contemporary museum that focuses on artists in the Chicano/ Latino movement. There current exhibit is called Conceptual Landscapes: recent work by Castillo and Mariana Garibay. Castillo's piece was an installation of sugar bags with her image printed on them. There was no artist statement provided, so one had to ascertain the meaning. The had her own image printed on these brown burlap sugar sacks, then hung them from the ceiling in huge circular columns. She also had large 11x14 photographs with repeated images of herself wearing the the sacks as a dress. I had wondered is she was supposed to represented the sugar cane fields that perhaps her people had worked on?

The more moving piece to me was the beautiful landscapes of Mariana. She brightly painted on the walls, and had paper images that resembles map like stokes upon them. She used mixed media of papers paints and other materials to create abstract images of the idea of a landscape. As a viewer each wall evoked a sense of a place. A red hued palette gave an air of love hate and fire, while the green hued wall had an almost floral vegetative alluring essence. They were all naturally beautiful to look at and gave a great sense of environment.


The exhibit runs through March 13th, 2010.