Throughout his artistic career, Castro has exalted the figure and genitality of the Latin American man, putting into tension the limits imposed by the sex/gender system that are part of an unquestionable patriarchal and phallocentric order. The majority of those portrayed are inhabitants of the Colombian coast, also constructing alternative ways of conceiving Latin American identity. By breaking taboos about corporality and male sexuality, his work has been censored on numerous occasions due to public accusations of immorality and pornography. Celso Castro’s work is a bare-bulb erotic photo foray into the underbelly of Colombia’s drug world.
AVAILABLE ARTWORKS BY CELSO CASTRO
Everyday Life in The Valley
Drawing on paper is his basic work tool, some are sketches of his surviving works, and others are sketches of moments he documents.
I am showering Series
The Search Series
Castro’s labor-intensive, photo-collage works of drug kingpins, smugglers, hitmen, countrymen, street vendors, soldiers, paramilitaries, kidnappers, and pimps pose showing with pride their erect penises to the voyeuristic viewer. They look back at us with a shameless stare. They play the game that moves between vanity and seduction. The root of these unique photographic works by the artist Celso Castro occurred when the artist returned from Italy to live back in Colombia in 1987. Castro wanted to produce from the photographs he took with his camera larger versions of those pieces, but having only registered his models with a single photograph it was impossible to achieve, given this need he adopts the language of fractionation completing the message he wants to transmit through his work. Castro perfected his technique throughout the years, now on he takes numbers of photographs of his subject, which are then assembled to conform a unique photo collage without distortion of the main image, gluing all the images on a single sheet of archival paper, the final work consisted of the perfect graduation of many photographs to achieve his monumental man.
Searching a Mother Series
Searching a Father Series
Guerreros Series
The Dysfunctional Family Series
Precolombian Fantasy Series
Frutas Series
CELSO CASTRO
REPRESENTED ARTIST
Celso Castro is a referent of Colombian Caribbean art who has been drawing men for more than four decades, studying at the Pratt Institute in New York. In his works, Castro exalts the male genitalia, putting into tension the limits imposed by the sex/gender system that are part of an unquestioned patriarchal and phallocentric order. Most ment the ones he portrays are inhabitants of the Colombian coast, also constructing alternative ways of conceiving Latin American identity. By breaking taboos on corporality and male sexuality, his work has been censored on many occasions due to public accusations of immorality and pornography.