David Castillo Gallery is proud to present Destroy This City.The show revolves around concepts metaphorically tied to the city, and includes work by eight of the gallery’s nine represented artists.  Destruction often finds its way into culture & life in general as part of the process of creating something new.  We see everyday how new modes of living are built from remnants. Destroy This City is a commentary in part on this kind of destruction in Miami or any other “polis.”

Each of the artists has created work specifically for the exhibition. Dealing with installations in much the same way that a city may be planned and created, works by Quisqueya Henriquez, Leyden Rodriguez-Casanova, and Wendy Wischer will offer commentaries of varying natures.  Henriquez’s pieces in the show deal with the constants of the city, Rodriguez works from the more personal side of the family-city sphere, and Wischer includes artwork informed by her deep interests in the relation between nature & technology.

Hugo Montoya’s photographic work is inspired by the urban randomness we live in, while Brendan Cass, Adam Shecter, and Beth Reisman include pieces dealing with beauty that can be related back to the city.  Brendan Cass departs from themes such as landscape painting (nostalgia for and away from the city), Adam Shecter’s work involves notions of beauty & terror, and the female form which arguably like all human form, is abstracted to a certain degree by life in the city is found in Beth Reisman’s painting.  Andrew Guenther’s work deals with the concepts of Destroy This City as commentaries on the ghoulish side of humanity and by extension, urban life—there is a visual beauty to his painting techniques while incorporating some darker elements of our very existence.  Such juxtaposition can be said to be the city itself.

Destroy This City is about the positive, what comes after destruction, what is built up, what is created, what is there when the dust settles.  Here, the works of all these artists are metaphorical commentaries on the city undergoing dramatic destruction/creation models.

Brendan Cass
Andrew Guenther
Hugo Montoya
Beth Reisman
Leyden Rodriguez-Casanova
Adam Shecter
Wendy Wischer