September 02nd, 2021

Lluis Barba, Mujer Sentada Tocando El Virginal, 2020, Diasec, 60 x 60 inches. 

​What effect has the pandemic had within our culture?  Historically, people have always turned to creative expression in times of crisis.  We are living through history.  Future historians will look back at this time and see what had evolved through writings and the visual arts.
 
Celebrating 28 years of success, the Aldo Castillo Gallery has passionately achieved its Mission to increase awareness of the significant cultural contributions of international artists and Latin American artists in particular, through exhibitions. For nearly three decades, the Aldo Castillo Gallery has evolved into a unique artist venue, with a creative vision and image based on a humanitarian perspective.
 
Aldo Castillo Gallery will be celebrating their one-year anniversary after opening their doors to a second location in Naples, Florida on the historic 5th Avenue during the pandemic last November.  The Founder, Aldo Castillo believed to his core that his gallery could be a temporary escape filled with expressions of much needed, contemporary art that could transport a visitor to a place of beauty allowing the mind to take a respite away from the fragile world of a pandemic.
 
The crowds did visit and are returning in record numbers, even during the summer months that in the past years were rarely seen. The gallery has a calm yet vibrant vibe that intrigues some visitors to revisit within the same week.
 
Among the world-renowned artists featured at the gallery is Conceptual Photographer Lluis Barba. Barcelona based Barba, merges social criticism into contemporary art.  He births new life inspired by historical paintings and crosses their boundaries by the addition of pop icons.  In his series Travelers in Time, he fuses a relationship between the varied characters in scenes striking the contrast between marginalization and opulence.
 
Visitors entering the gallery,  study his piece, identifying famous faces such as Elvis and Ann Margaret, Johnny Depp and U2’s Bono, glamorously placed in  Masters paintings including “A Young Lady Seated At A Virginal” c1670, Johannes Vermeer; Michelangelo’s The Creation of Man; and pictured in top corner, Hieronymus Bosch which all blends together and becomes a collaged spectacle. Barcode tattoos on the icons represent a loss of individual identity with fame and fortune. His works mirror what we perceive art to be or perhaps the irony of what our culture has become.