Andrea Castillo

        Animate Objects    

 

       One white plastic bag

       One coarse stick of wood

       One half dead palm tree

       One blue metal container

       One red coca cola can

 

A fortuitous scene, an assemblage of what appears to be still objects is something more unexpected. Materiality showing itself as something not to be ignored commanding attention in its own right, a scene not so different from our own.

As such these intimate paintings examine a closer look at the urban territory of objects as agents of both human and material collectively.

In the industrial landscape of Los Angeles coming across sprouting branches of flora through cracks, overstuffed waste containers in alleys, I began to see the ability of these inanimate things to animate. Unwanted palms thrown away in plastic garbage do not conclude there but continue transforming, and yet paradoxically that materiality can never really be thrown “away”. Any division between the human and the thinghood shows itself to be flawed. Materiality is both me/human and a coca cola can/nonhuman.

 Taking a closer look to things unnoticed and the extent to which the us and the it slip-slide into each other, we might see we are also nonhuman and that things too are lively players of the world.