For his exhibition Colorido engaño at Galería ATC, the artist has created a new series of paintings with his usual technique, oil on prepared wooden boards. From gloomy backgrounds, forms emerge organically variegated, which, like flowers or animals, seem to contour and follow circular or quasi-circular movement. Dynamic yet static, and imprecise in outline, these shapes seem to take on a life of their own. Overflowing, not only because of the synchronous tentacles which seem to ebb with life, but also through the luminescence of the air surrounding them, thus allowing them to appear as cartilaginous projections —even bones, shells and coatings.
What they represent is an enigma. If we try to grasp the shapes with our eyes, we realize that the gestures impressed upon the wooden base, though controlled, are inaccessible. More than things, these gestures are traces, shadows; being something without being, eluding definition.
It is thus that Sema Castro's painting takes on a deceptive, illusionistic and playful appearance. Unlike death, life itself: "the colorful hoax" (or, colorido engaño).
Sema Castro (Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, 1960) lives and works on the island of Tenerife. His artistic practice began in 1990. He uses oil paint on rigid supports, mostly wooden boards on which he practices a technique of gestural automatism that suggests figures of an organic nature. He has been linked to the Artizar (La Laguna), Manuel Ojeda (Las Palmas de Gran Canaria), Contrast (Barcelona), Bibli (Santa Cruz de Tenerife) and Estampa (Madrid). He has participated in various art fairs, including ArtMadrid (Madrid) with Galería Stamp; ARCO (Madrid), ArteSantander (Santander), and NewArt (Barcelona) with Manuel Gallery Ojeda; Affordable (Mexico) with the Pilar Cubillo Gallery; and SCOPE ART FAIR (New York) with the Gallery Contrast. His work has been present at Latitude, Dakar Biennale, (Senegal).
