Tropicarios #01 initiates surreal tropical tableaux photography series where fiction and Castello's tropical memories blend creating personal approximation between viewers' own fictions and artist's constructed worlds. This digital pigment color work gives life to objects (plastic figurines, natural geodes, artificial tropical plants) through theatrical staging—atmosphere between reality (actual photographed materials) and fiction (surreal tropical narratives). As first numbered work, Tropicarios #01 establishes series' method: playing with memory of tropics not as documentary but as staged fantasy approximation, miniature people in tropical costumes inhabiting mineral surfaces creating condensed theatrical tropical universes. The work evokes emotions about how tropics exist as much in collective imagination as geographic reality: each viewer invited to experience space recognizing own tropical fictions when confronting Castello's miniature worlds where natural minerals, artificial flora, toy figures cohabit in photographic autofiction blending inherited imagery with contemporary surreal sensibility.
Paloma Castello's Tropicarios is an invitation to experience a space in which the fiction and her memories of the tropics blend together to create a personal approximation between our own fictions and those of the artist.
Surreal tropical tableaux photography blending fiction and reality—miniature staged worlds inviting personal tropical approximation. Tropicarios #01 by Paloma Castello. Available at The Art Design Project, Miami Beach.
Surreal Tropical Tableaux Photography – Tropicarios #01, 2017 by Castello
Tropicarios #1, 2017
From Tropicarios series
Digital photography print on chroma luxe.
Dimensions: 33 H x 21.6 W in
Edition 3/5 + 1AP
Paloma Castello was born in Bogotá, Colombia in 1988. Castello has a Master's degree in Classical Studies from the Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá, Colombia, as well as a Master's degree in Contemporary Photography from IED Madrid in Spain. She studied Photography, Art and Architecture at Central Saint Martins, London, United Kingdom and before beginning her training as an artist in Colombia she attended the School of Arts and Crafts of Santo Domingo to study Silversmithing Techniques and the University of the Andes where she studied Wood Reproduction. Castello and obtained a Bachelor's Degree in Fine Arts from the Jorge Tadeo Lozano University, Bogotá, Colombia.
