GR2: Banana Flats - Ako Castuera

Giant Robot is proud to present Banana Flats, an exhibition featuring new work by Ako Castuera.


Banana Flats
Opening Reception with the Artist: Saturday, September 13, 2014, 6:30-10:00 PM
Exhibition duration: September 13th – October 1st, 2014
Giant Robot 2 (GR2)
2062 Sawtelle Boulevard
Los Angeles CA 90025

There are no Bananas in Banana Flats. "Banana Flats" is an idea for a place where the mind is free.

It's a land of non-geographical dimensions, a twilight zone of creative energy where nature and imagination come into synthesis. It is an environment capable of supporting an abundance of life, impossible for us to witness from Earth except through a portal of artistic expression. Fragile but tenacious, the inhabitants of Banana Flats live all around us, in a state of lively suspension until they are channelled by a sympathetic human who will provide them with a body. 

The exhibition "Banana Flats" is the first recorded gathering of these bodies, brought into our dimension by the sculptural exertions of artist Ako Castuera. To the average eye, they will look like colorful anthropomorphic sculptures made from a range of clays from locally dug earth to the finest porcelain. Over a time of 9 months, Ms. Castuera has provided ceramic bodies to scores of distinct entities from Banana Flats. 

On Earth, shadows are cast by objects. In Banana Flats it's the other way around. Our earth shadows project objects into an imaginary world. Our biggest shadows are cast by the abuse humans inflict on each other and on our planet. These shadows crush all kinds of life, making it seem like we are not connected, like we have broken apart and will never come together again. The clay forms from Banana Flats are opposite reactions to the big shadows of Earth. They are small, but in their humble way they have the potential to keep us connected to each other and to our free minds. 

Ako Castuera recently exhibited at the Oakland Museum of California’s SuperAwesome: Art and Giant Robot as well as Art Intersections, also curated by Eric Nakamura, a pop-up museum organized by the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center and the Smithsonian Latino Center as part of the 2013 Asian-Latino Festival, which explored the linkages of these communities in Food, Art and Thought.

About Ako Castuera
Ako Castuera is constantly busy with projects in mud, paint, and string. Castuera has a great interest in the place stories take up in the mind, and has worked as a writer and storyboard artist on the television show "Adventure Time." She pursues the unseen by creating things that can be seen. The sculptures, paintings, and objects Castuera makes are physical points for trajectories of thought and exploration. She received her BFA from the California College of the Arts and currently resides in Los Angeles, California.

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