Jonathan Castro’s graphic designs evolved from an adolescence spent in noise shows and his fascination with the synthesizing aesthetics of subcultural fanzines. His imagery is based on the kind of immersion into sensation that noise concert demand of the audience. Growing up in Peru during a time of particularly intense social unrest, he saw the underground concerts as a place where people could work through their own powerlessness in the face of structural instability. The conflict also incited many people to move to Lima from more rural parts of Peru.The hybrid cultural expressions that resulted from this internal displacement produced a dynamic synthesis of vivid colors in public space that Castro still considers the foundation of his palette. It also motivates his research into sound bleed and visual feedback static. He sees these as forms that emerge when a given system is overloaded with information, pushed to its limit, and made to speak to multiple truths at once.
For Castro, making these tensions visible is an act of resistance. He is interested in the ways in which confusion can elicit a textured emotional response from the viewer. Mixing aesthetics and philosophies with the pluralities of music, the images he createsare rich, chromatic, and embodied manifestations of a living spirit.
The space and objects give residence to emotions, memories, speculation and associations for a possible re-orientation of the present, and for larger questions of what constitutes consciousness and the boundaries of abstraction.
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