Jane Castillo, “Excentricidad Eliplica (Ecliptic Eccentricity),”
2000, synthetic hair balls, 36 x 36 x 36”.
Having graduated from the Claremont Graduate University ten years ago, Jane Castillo has reached the success or failure point often mentioned by the school’s founder and mentor, Roland Reiss. Castillo is now an official success story with this month’s mini-retrospective and an installation at the “C.O.L.A. 2009” exhibition at Barnsdall Park. Meanwhile, Tarryn Teresa Gallery showcases her career-making “hairball” theme. For Castillo, who is from Columbia, hair is a marker of identity and gender; hair places you in the cultural hierarchy based upon the preferred color and straightness: you have either high hair or low hair. To comment upon the large role hair plays in the life of its owner, Castillo makes huge “hairballs” of densely curled hair, formed painstakingly by hand, and then hung on ropes from the ceiling. The “hair” is as artificial as the semiotic meaning of hair types, and, depending on its color, one ball can knock the others about. “Ecliptic Eccentricity” is a series of five large hairballs, four black and one blond, a re-designed pendulum. The blond hairball is on the end--the position of power. It can knock the black ones around. The hairballs reappear in tiny drawings that can go unnoticed by visitors. They are stopped at the door. The room is filled with a cascade of thin strands of white nylon rope. The shimmering fibers drape like a protective veil, barring access to a twelve-foot high cone of tiny black hairballs, each striving to rise to the top. There is nothing natural in Castillo’s work. Hair is a statement of artifice, truly an object of culture.
Published courtesy of ArtScene
