This Wednesday, Cuban artist and author Elmer Castillo hosted an artist talk and presented his book, “La Espiral que no se Expande” (The Spiral That Does Not Expand), at the Palazzo Albrizzi-Capello. The event is part of the programming for the 61st Venice Biennale, which opened on May 9th and will run through November 22nd.
The exhibition features works from Castillo’s ongoing series of the same name, inspired by the Polymita picta—Cuba’s multi-colored snail, an endangered species endemic to the island. The artist explores this subject through stratified surfaces that blend acrylics with organic materials such as Cuban soil, fibers, tobacco leaves, roots, and resin.
As an extension of the project, Castillo also debuted two spiral sculptures crafted in Murano glass. These pieces translate the series’ visual language into a three-dimensional form, reinforcing the core concepts of contained expansion and suspended movement.
The series takes the spiral as a natural blueprint for growth and development. However, in Castillo’s work, this structure is deliberately interrupted, forced to coil back upon itself. This serves as a poignant call to halt the decline of the Polymita picta and a plea for the preservation of the Cuban environment.
Rather than addressing these issues through overt political imagery, Castillo explores them through material tension, fossilized motion, and structures that strive to grow while remaining trapped within their own boundaries. The organic materials embedded in the pictorial surface become fragile capsules of memory, preservation, and suspended transformation.
In a compelling addition to the exhibition, Castillo performed an improvised piece using GPS tracking to trace a "contained spiral" through the streets of Venice over several hours. Joined by fellow artists and passersby, the resulting satellite-generated drawing transformed physical exhaustion and interrupted movement into a temporal cartography of confinement.
In tandem with the exhibition, Castillo presented the project’s editorial component: a printed publication and a unique, handmade artist’s book. Both have recently been acquired by the ASAC Library (Historical Archives of Contemporary Arts) of La Biennale di Venezia for archival preservation and online consultation.
About the Artist
Born in Guantánamo, Cuba, over five decades ago, Elmer Castillo is a visual artist whose work merges painting, organic matter, and sculptural interventions. His practice explores memory, fragility, interrupted growth, and the accumulation of historical traces on contemporary surfaces.
A 2008 Information Technology graduate from the University of Alcalá de Henares (Madrid), Castillo began his artistic career as a self-taught creator before formalizing his studies in Art History at the University of Palermo and Contemporary Art at MoMA. He held his first solo exhibition, focusing on handmade paper, at La Celosía gallery in his hometown in 1998. Since 2002, he has been based in Madrid, where he has expanded his practice into design and photography.
Contact:
+39 347 270 8068
info@elmercastillo.art
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