ABOUT THE WORK

The contemporary artist Anton Del Castillo is arguably not only an acclaimed and celebrated auteur but a profound voice in the socio-political debate. His recent body of work focuses on the perils, ills, and effects of war and conflict. But unlike the treatment done by his contemporaries, Del Castillo employs new and novel ways of seeing talking about war and violence. As a stark contrast to the hyper-realist, social realist, surrealist, and expressionist take that dominate the contemporary creative sphere, he has decided to look towards the past and employ the naive and primitivist aesthetic often associated with the grandiose myths of the ancients such as the Egyptians and the Greeks. But this does not mean one can pass off his work as lacking in depth or essence. On the contrary, his return to primordial representation seeks to remind us of our long and entangled history with war. Del Castillo’s treatment seeks to show how war, no matter the period and place, is always nearby and is a subject that warrants our attention. Del Castillo’s work also defies our struggles, but in a comparative sense more so than a literal one. This oeuvre entitled A Race To The End shows how, through the words of acclaimed cultural critic and philosopher Bruno Latour, we as humans were “never really modern”—wherein the the notion that we have outgrown our mystical relationship with the gods, magic, and nature was not entirely achieved despite the progression of history. Instead, we have merely replaced them; nature with the state, magic with science and the gods with warmongers.