Who was in charge?...is a great question when considering this place. Like the myriad of other reviewers, I've spent eight years asking this question.
The amazing thing is that every person I've asked over those years has had a different answer. Is it about the personalities? Or, the relationships? Or, simply, the history of what happened? What made this place important? I suppose it is a combination of it all. But, if we needed to quantify things:
3 Stars = Personalities
4 Stars = Relationships
2 Stars = Events, Exhibitions, Book Store, Publishing Thing
1 Star = Bathroom
Another question: Who, or what, is survived? The answer to that is perhaps just a languid enthusiasm for art and writing that occasionally became form in a place and time where it was a true cultural odd-ball.
Certainly, it was peculiar. The self-sabotage and self-deprecation of its identity have been woven into a matrix of recent dissolution, disfunction, and tragedy. However, the triumph has always been its collective ego trumping any one individual's. Thinking about the prospect of a decision having to be made by castillo/corrales scares the utter shit out of me.
When the mumbled news broke of its demise, a palpable sigh of relief was heard by every artist who had ever worked with the space. Now we will never again be asked to donate a piece for the c/c annual art auction. But sadness, of course, is the undertone to this celebration. No one deserved this place. Its resistance to progress was really something from which we could all learn. Its confident laziness had few cultural siblings.
That laziness was maybe just about allowing the tragedy of distraction. Cigarettes. Who among them could truly quit smoking? Consequently, it was an economy of sacrifice that eventually penned this obituary.
Furthermore, some of its accomplishments are not part of a public archive: so many jokes, girlfriends, boyfriends, friends, cigarettes, teaching jobs, gallery representation, Katherine Bigelow, holidays of sport, travel, babies, petanque tournaments, etc....
Like many of us, I learned much from castillo/corrales. "No rules," being the most lasting lesson. The place really took a risk on me before anyone else. All that willy-nilly confidence translated into support often ill-aligned with consensus and for this, myself and a handful of other unpopular artists will be forever grateful. Goodbye, dear castillo/corrales. As I've said before, in some ways, my heart took shape there. read more
