Andrew Casto (b. Ohio, USA, 1977) lives and works in Iowa City, USA. He was the 2011 MJD fellow at The Archie Bray Foundation for Ceramic Art in Helena, Montana, and has exhibited work internationally in Spain, Croatia, Italy, Austria, Slovenia, Belgium, China, Switzerland, France, and Japan. Casto was a recipient of a 2015 Emerging Artist award by the National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts (NCECA), and was a finalist for the 2017 Young Masters Maylis Grand Ceramics Prize with Cynthia Corbett Gallery, London. Casto has exhibited in over seventy group exhibitions, with recent solo exhibitions at Galleria Salvatore Lanteri in Milan in 2016, and Mindy Solomon Gallery in Miami in 2017. He is currently Assistant Professor of Art and Head of Ceramics at The University of Iowa.

Artist Statement:

My current body of work involves an investigation into dialogues concerning extant negative forces in our lives, and to what degree the phenomenological ramifications of responsibilities and stress shape us physically, mentally, and emotionally. The formal language present in this analysis is based on a material study of erosion and geological processes translated into ceramic and mixed media objects. I seek a purposeful link between macrocosmic environmental change, and interruptions in our otherwise routine existence. Within this inquiry, alternative and diverse construction methods are emphasized as tools of fresh, genuine expression in the creation of dynamic assemblages of great fragility. The foundation of this exploration is a desire to uncover the sublime in these moments of incongruity; the rush of presence into experience that might otherwise remain banal and ordinary, brought on by perceived inconvenience. My work asserts that it is possible for our daily vexations to illuminate the power of the present moment – something we all too often fail to notice.