información
bio
Franco Castilla is a Nicaraguan-born artist and educator living in Los Angeles. He holds a BFA in painting and printmaking from Virginia Commonwealth University and an MFA in painting and drawing from the Ohio State University. He has exhibited his work in venues throughout the Los Angeles area including LACE, elephant, Monte Vista Projects, LAST Projects, soundpedro, and the Other Places Art Fair at the Angels Gate Cultural Center.
artist statement
My practice explores the intricate relationship between nature and humanity in the Greater Los Angeles area. It looks at the collisions and intersections of the anthropogenic and natural forces that ebb and flow to form and produce urban and rural expanses. Free-market capitalism, the Industrial Revolution and the Digital Age, unfettered colonialism and imperialism, and asymmetrical neo-liberal policies have led to the misemployment and abuse of geological, botanical, zoological, and meteorological phenomena. These manufactured projects are launched and effectuated in defiance of human and environmental well being resulting in acute consolidations of power, staggering economic inequality, mass over-production and consumption, and environmental degradation due to the contamination of air, water, and land. The clash between human beings and natural forces is disrupting and destabilizing ecosystems creating uninhabitable circumstances for all life forms with an increase in extreme temperature conditions, fires, floods, droughts, and pollution.