The Esther Klein Gallery (EKG) is delighted to host Juan M. Castro for his first solo show in the United States. Castro`s work addresses critical issues arising at the intersection of emergent technologies and society, informed by media arts practices including information visualization, physical computing and biomedia art and by scientific research in biology and chemistry. Long interested in the aesthetics of biological processes and the origins of life, Castro possesses an endless curiosity that combines with his fascination with the world of molecules and membranes.
A matter of softness includes a complete and reconfigured installation entitled “Fat between 2 worlds”. This project was created over a 3-year period in collaboration with research laboratories in Japan and France. The work brilliantly sums the main subjects and questions that fill Castro's imagination. It presents a collection of artificial membranes with unique morphologies grown in vitro. The potential of these structures is revealed both as soft architectures, that can reach centimeters in length, and microstructures which form highly interconnected networks, filamentous morphologies and biogeometrical groupings. Castro produced them with incomparable skill and inventiveness, using self-assembly processes and a host of different organic molecules (phospholipids, cholesterol, DNA, etc.). On the other hand, the work “transformation” presents 3D visualizations of organic structures inspired by the shape deformation of membranes.
The works presented in this exhibition are conceived as extensions of Castro’s wider research on membranes as primordial microenvironments, which may have enabled the emergence of cellular life, and novel experimental microsites central to synthesis of minimal living systems. Through its presentation in Philadelphia and engagement with the Science Center community, A matter of softness hopes to reflect on creative and material principles based on molecular interactions, self-organization and living processes, but also on the ontology of “wet” artificial life and potential long-term challenges and scenarios that it might bring to society.
Juan M. Castro has been involved in interdisciplinary practices between the fields of media art, microbiology and chemistry. He has a M.A. in Information Design (2008) and a Ph.D. in Philosophy (2011) from Tama Art University in Japan. On receiving his doctorate, Juan Manuel worked in the laboratory for molecular cell network at Waseda University as a JSPS postdoctoral researcher. After Waseda, he moved to France to work as a research fellow (IMéRA) at the Center for Interdisciplinary Nanoscience of Marseille (CINaM).
Since 2008, Juan Manuel has been presenting his projects internationally in museums, art & science festivals, scientific meetings and academic conferences. His work has been exhibited at Science Gallery Dublin; NTT InterCommunication Center [ICC], Japan; the Central House of Artists, Russia; the Estonian Museum of Applied Art and Design; among others. In 2014, he returned to Japan, where is currently working as a research fellow in the Toyota Group at The University of Tokyo.