Tom Castinel

Tom Castinel works according to the musical principles of sampling and mixing, thus reconnecting with their visual predecessor: assemblage. From this plundering—both joyful and brutal by nature—emerge works and exhibitions in which all media resonate (sculpture, writing, drawing, video performance), where a clever play of cross-references activates sources from different eras and of various natures (musical, literary, artistic). The keys to this telescoping of elements are sometimes hidden in the titles, which the mischievous artist often encrypts.

The driving force of his practice lies less in a surrealist aesthetic of profusion than in a more playful, synthetic concentration, closer to Dada or Fluxus, with which he shares an irreverence and a refusal to distinguish art from daily life. In this tension—intensified by deliberately low-tech forms—the works convey the urgency of an essential and intimate relationship with things: one that is at once ordinary, material, and embodied.

Text by Anne Giffon-Selle, 2014
Excerpt from the exhibition press release Er Läutete – She romps, LE CAP, Saint-Fons, September 6 to October 31, 2014, following the artist’s residency in Stuttgart, awarded by art3 Valence.

Tom Castinel’s work in on display during the exhibition Interprétation à l’oeuvre, 2016.