Andrew Casto

“Andrew Casto’s, Assemblage 110, is an intelligent blend of humor and refined craftsmanship. The organic and somewhat unrefined shapes suggest a less graceful take on the traditional medium ceramics which is renowned for craft and refinement and works to expand the possibility of what the medium is capable of. The hints of gold and candy colored glazing remind us of a remnant one might find in the excavation of a world envisioned by Takashi Murakami.”

— Julian Lombardi, of Contemporary Art Digest, in Art Palm Springs "Selects".

“We often perceive the deep time of geology to be nearly impossible to grasp. Casto’s work trades in the traveler’s impulse to visit to caverns, caves, and tawdry highway “wonderspots,” and is at base, a low level search for a taste of the vastness of the universe and its slow changes over many millennia. ”

— Jenni Sorkin, Associate Professor of Art, UC Santa Barbara

My current body of work involves an investigation into extant negative forces in our lives, and to what degree the phenomenological ramifications of stress shape us physically, mentally, and emotionally. The formal language present in this analysis is based on a material study of geologic processes translated into ceramic and mixed media objects, often referencing historical vessel form. I seek a purposeful link between macrocosmic environmental change, and interruptions in our otherwise routine existence.

The foundation of this exploration is a desire to uncover the sublime in these moments of incongruity; the rush of presence into experience that might otherwise remain banal and ordinary, brought on by perceived inconvenience. My work asserts that it is possible for our daily vexations to illuminate the power of the present moment – something we all too often fail to notice.

Andrew Casto

Iowa City, 2019