Los Carpinteros

Marco Antonio Castillo Valdés (Camagüey, Cuba. 1971) and Dagoberto Rodríguez Sanchez (Caibarién, Cuba. 1969) founded the Los Carpinteros collective in the early 90’s together with Alexandre Arrechea, who collaborated with them during their early years. They graduated from the Superior Art Institute of Havana (ISA), and are primarily interested in exploring the traditional notions of architecture, design, space and object-function, among others, with wit and a scathing sense of humour. The majority of their work is comprised of sculptures, installations and watercolours. During their early years as a collective, the artists worked against a cultural backdrop marked by the Cuban Revolution and the recession. Those circumstances led them to work with recycled materials, especially wood, which they transformed using handicraft techniques. Therein lies origin of their artistic name, Los Carpinteros, which is somewhat subversive in that it refers directly to the world of the craftsmen and not to that of the artist. They work to break down not only the barrier that exists between art and object, but also between art and artefact. In 2003, Arrechea left the collective and Los Carpinteros continued as a duo. Today, Castillo and Rodríguez are no longer subject to the material restrictions and limitations that hindered them when they first started out; accordingly, their work has flourished from the use of versatile techniques and disciplines. Their international renown is evidenced by the inclusion of their artwork in public and private collections, including the Galician Centre of Contemporary Art (CGAC) in Santiago de Compostela (Spain), the Extremaduran and Latin American Museum of Contemporary Art (MEIAC) in Badajoz (Spain), the Tate Gallery in London (UK), the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris (France), the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City (US), and Daros-Latinamerica in Zürich (Switzerland)