WALES.- Mostyn, Llandundo, Wales, is presenting a new exhibition of work by American artist, Rosemarie Castoro (1939-2015) and also restaging one of her most ambitious public projects on a prominent location - a work only ever presented one time before in the late 1970s in New York, and created from over 150 trees trunks. The work - 'Trap A Zoid' - described by Castoro as “painting you can walk in” is visible from the West Shore, overlooking Llandudno beach and was created for this second iteration using reclaimed tree trunks donated by a local North Welsh timber cooperative.
The original outdoor work has only ever been shown only once, in 1978, for Creative Time’s Art on the Beach on Manhattan’s lower east side. Castoro chose to work with cylindrical logs to create a field in the form of an asymmetrical geometric shape. A drawing in the collection of Yale University Art Gallery reveals the grid structure that underlies this work. A series of journal photographs from 1978 show Castoro working through the use of such arrangements of wooden elements in related works titled Pier Group and Tank Trap. In a telling inscription alongside these images is the phrase “an obstacle course for a dancer,” revealing the continued referencing of the dancer’s body in movement. These works address perception through perspective and heightened recession, a recurrence of the theme of infinity in Castoro’s work. For Mostyn, North Wales trees are being used to reflect the local context, laid in a grid overlooking the town’s local beaches.
Clare Harding, Interim Director, Mostyn, said, “The Mostyn exhibition provides an unprecedented opportunity to start new conversations and inspire new thinking about Castoro’s sculpture and reflect upon her legacy. Her work transgressed boundaries and metamorphosed into an erotically charged language, communicating a sense of empowered female identity. We are thrilled to display this important outdoor work as a celebration of Rosemarie’s exhibition in Mostyn and to bring such an important work to life again, over 40 years after it was first made”
Werner Pichler, co-founder of the Estate of Rosemarie Castoro said, “To recreate Trap A Zoid is certainly a wonderful opportunity to bring one of Rosemarie’s large scale installations back to life! Already the photographs that document the installation from 1978 are very powerful. So I am sure that to actually stand in front of that work, life size, will be a remarkable experience. Since there are records of the diagrams which Rosemarie based her installation on, it will be possible to come up with an installation completely true to the artist’s intention.The Estate is very grateful to Mostyn and the Henry Moore Foundation for this extraordinary chance to show one of Rosemarie’s major outdoor art works, alongside with her works that will be shown in the museum”
The exhibition at Mostyn includes works on paper, concrete poetry, wall relief work, sculptural pieces and archival material; the exhibition offers a comprehensive angle on her extensive practice from the 1960s onwards. Rosemarie Castoro formulated her unique artistic idiom within the context of Minimalist and Conceptual art in 1960s New York. Her work was formed in a particular moment of the concurrence of Minimalism with an empowered female identity, a circumstance shared by other female Minimalist artists and practitioners including Agnes Martin, Anne Truitt, Eva Hesse, Simone Forti, Yvonne Rainer and Lucy R. Lippard.
While studying graphic design at the Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, she became involved with the New Dance Group and later appeared in several performances with famed Minimalist choreographer Yvonne Rainer. Defying easy categorisation, Castoro did not like to be put in categories, she said: “People call me a minimalist, but I consider myself a maxiMUST” and she called herself a ‘painter sculptor’. A dancer’s awareness of space informed her works, which is emphasised in the performative Polaroids she took of herself interacting with them in her studio.
From 1964 onwards, Castoro created systematic works exploring colour and structural compositions in highly innovative experimentations, like her Y-Unit Interference and Inventory paintings and drawings. In 1968 – a time of political unrest in the USA – Castoro abandoned colour and started to engage with Conceptual art, street works, concrete poetry and Post-Minimalist sculpture. From the 1970s until the final years of her life, Castoro focused on sculptural experimentation, creating organic shapes that represented a parallel to the experimentation of Eva Hesse and Louise Bourgeois. Castoro had a tendency to blend media, investing her works with a bodily dimension that is rarely present in the mathematical principles underlying Minimalism. The famed feminist critic and curator Lucy R. Lippard later identified her as a figure who 'subverted or overrode Minimalism on its own turf'.
Mostyn is a free, public gallery in Llandudno, Wales, that presents a programme of outstanding international contemporary art within its galleries and online. This programme has recently included solo exhibitions by Cerith Wyn-Evans, Jacqueline de Jong, Nick Hornby, Chiara Camoni, Anj Smith, Nobuko Tsuchiya, Derek Boshier, Louisa Gagliardi and Shezad Dawood. Mostyn offers a public engagement programme including talks, tours and workshops, and supports over 400 artists through their onsite and online shop. Mostyn receives support from the Arts Council of Wales and is part of Plus TATE, the UK-wide contemporary visual art network.
The outdoor work is on show at Llandudno’s West Shore since the 17th February 2024, and will continue to 5th March 2024.
