The exhibition showcased Castellón’s experimental, mixed-media drawings made from graphite, ink, charcoal, sweat, and mud. Working closely with his chosen materials, the artist draws out their affective and formal qualities to create intricate, ethereal drawings that merge geometric structures with biomorphic designs. His works incorporate intuitive gestures that recall surrealist practices, anthropological inquiry, and ancient scripts, resulting in a dynamic body of work that frames nature as an authorial force and entropy as an artistic cycle. Writing about his practice, Shere emphasizes the elusiveness that marks both Castellón’s personality and his art, linking the artist’s reserved demeanor to his quiet yet rigorous conceptual interventions, shaped by his cultural background and aesthetic ingenuity. In their exhibition essays, Shere and Leinss also situate Castellón within his broader biography, tracing his migration path and highlighting his professional achievements as an artist, curator, and cultural worker in the Bay Area.
Rolando Castellón (b.1937) is a Nicaraguan artist and curator who moved to San Francisco in 1956 at the age of nineteen. During his time living in the Bay Area, he was a prominent advocate for community arts programming and minority artists, working actively as a practicing artist, curator, gallerist, and cultural worker. In the late 1960s, he became involved with Casa Hispana de Bellas Artes, serving as the director of artistic programs in 1969. Coming out of this work, Castellón became a cofounder of Galería de la Raza in 1970 and was elected as the Galería’s first director before it became more established and moved away from a cooperative model. After two years, he left Galería to work at SFMOMA, first as the program coordinator and art director of M.I.X. (1972–75), and later as a full-time curator (1975–81). After his appointments at SFMOMA, he served as the director of the Mary Porter Sesnon Art Gallery at UC Santa Cruz (1982–92). During this time, he opened different iterations of Castellón Gallery, and curated exhibitions at various venues across San Francisco; among them, Drawings from the Fourth World at Meridian Gallery in 1989. In 1993, he moved back to Costa Rica, where he had briefly lived as a young boy, and was appointed the chief curator of the Museum of Contemporary Art and Design (MADC) in 1994. He continues to live and work in San José, Costa Rica.
