go to exhibition


Who Will Measure Space? Who Will Tell Me When?, 2015
Cogwheels, 2021
Courtesy of the artist and kurimanzutto

Serpentine Curves, 2021
Courtesy of the artist and kurimanzutto

Brancusi Corncob Cogwheel, 2015
Collection of Bruno y Michelle Fregoso

Models, 2015
Courtesy of the artist and kurimanzutto

Ceramic columns made of clay from Atzompa, Oaxaca
Produced in collaboration with Taller de cerámica Coatlicue and Colectivo 1050°, Oaxaca

In 2015, Castillo Deball and a group of ceramists from Atzompa, Oaxaca visited the Rufino Tamayo Prehispanic Art Museum and together selected their favorite pieces. To this set, they then added screws and gears found at the Taller de cerámica Coatlicue to form a vocabulary for telling their tales: serpents, trees, a top, a ball, a horned warrior, the mother earth, a potter, dogs, corn, elders, a turkey and an infinite column, among others. This repertory of forms, some of them archaeological and others mechanical, playful or synthetic, allowed stories to be imagined that are now raised up as columns in the exhibition space.

The primary exercise consisted of developing two narratives: the history of the universe over one hundred years and the history of the universe on one day. The characters of these stories then came alive in clay and the different elements mounted on the columns. With this process, Castillo Deball seeks to challenge the idea of a static tradition: the project sparks a series of discussions on copies, falsifications and changes in style over the course of history, broadening the debate on what constitutes archaeology in the present.

go to Institute of Chance