about time

ABOUT TIME: Solo Exhibit by Claudio Castillo at Salomon Arts,
83 Leonard Street, 4th Floor, New York City, NY 10013. Tel: 212 966-1997, 305 310-9308. Nov 13 - Dec 4, 2010. Opening Nov 13, from 6 to 9 PM
Claudio Castillo creates Generative Art by dividing his watercolor paintings into individual layers, independently
animating each layer, then reassembling them all to perform on a computer in a programmed, random,
nonlinear, self-replicating progression. The tides and lunar phases are pre-programmed to follow their real-
world counterparts. The computer does not create any of the art but simply arranges and displays it. Unlike
video art, Generative Art is constantly regenerating itself, rendering unique compositions that have one chance
of repetition in 400,000 to 8 trillion years. Castillo completes the creative cycle by producing new, one-of-a-kind,
high-quality watercolor prints, each with a distinct time stamp, taken from the generative process.
In Castillo’s Reactive Art, weather, news, and financial markets drive compositions in real time via feeds from
the Internet. Each work composes itself as a reaction to live data. The artist creates the variables and then lets
data feeds arrange the imagery. For example, in GTMO Landscape, Castillo created multiple animated variables
of heat, wind, humidity, cloud cover, precipitation, and time of day; when the artwork receives weather
information from a city, the result is an animated piece that most closely fits the incoming data. Proof of
Life/End of Media combines real time RSS News and stock market feeds in one piece. In the foreground, a video
of a palm tree changes color in reaction to the Dow Jones Industrial Average. Green is up; red is down;
uncolored, even or closed. In the background, news articles appear as they are received. Through the artist’s
website, the audience can change the city location or stock market index.
Claudio Castillo was born in Havana, Cuba, raised in Europe, and lives in Miami. He has been painting and
exhibiting watercolors for over thirty years. He has exhibited his animated art pieces worldwide. He received the
Museum of Latin American Art's award for Best Video in 2009 for Virgin Apparition, now in the museum's
permanent collection, and has shown his art there twice. He has exhibited his artwork at the Museum of
Contemporary Art in Shanghai, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Taipei, and the Naples Art Museum in
Naples, Florida.