Baltazar Castillo

Baltazar Castillo American b. 1953 My work is a mixed media assemblage of paint and torn paper. I use fashion magazine spreads as both collage and photographic transfer material. As source material, they determine color, content, and pattern. The transfer technique consists of acrylic mediums brushed onto pages and the pages pressed onto the canvas. With images absorbed onto the canvas, the distressed pages, sans images, are carefully peeled and applied to the canvas as collage elements. Sucked of their cultural content, in a washed out state, the distressed source pages, the transferred images merge to form abstract shapes. In the sifting stage that follows these shapes are pummeled back to recognizable landscapes or figurative interiors often using Paper Mache for bulk and mass.
I have developed and combined the uses of craft techniques, of paper Mache -with the traditional method of collage to cover the canvas surface in order to create unique supports. Simultaneously I have come to acknowledge the traditional use of collage as a process analogous to that of wallpapering interiors. I use the idea of a covered interior to recreate by relocating images and color from the page to the canvas, to draw and absorb from applied materi...

Triton College
School of the Art Institute of Chicago

2013 Urban Alliance Exhibition, group show
Urban Alliance Corporation, Chi. Il.
with SAIC’s Community Arts Partners

Capism Biannual Exhibition, group show
Capism Corporation, Chi. IL.


2012 "What’s So Pretty About America" solo show
Wicker Park/ Bucktown Library Chi. Il

"Looks Like Live Action" group exhibit/
performance for Chicago Artist Month,

Chicago Loop Alliance, two person show
Borders Books Chi.IL


2011 Built Festival, group show Chi.IL

Hyatt Regency Group Exhibit with SAIC
Community Arts Partnership Hyatt Regency
Hotels Chi, IL

2010 New American Landscape, group show and book
publication, Las Manos Gallery,Chicago, IL
Betty Dare Gallery - Chicago, Il, solo show

2009 Arte Ahora - Latin American Art Expo, group show Aldo Castillo Gallery, Chi. Il