Rosemarie Castoro: Trap A Zoid

17 Feb-5 Mar 2024

Overview

From Saturday 17th February to 5th March, Mostyn will restage ‘Trap A Zoid’, one of Rosemarie Castoro’s most ambitious public projects on a prominent location on West Shore Beach, Llandudno.

This work has only ever been presented once before, in the late 1970s in New York, and created from around 200 tree trunks. Described by Castoro as a “painting you can walk in”, it will be created for this second iteration using reclaimed, locally sourced and processed timber tree trunks donated by The Timber Cooperative, a local North Wales social enterprise.

The original outdoor work has only ever been shown only once, in 1978, for Creative Time’s Art on the Beach on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Castoro chose to work with cylindrical logs to create a field in the form of an asymmetrical geometric shape. A drawing in the collection of Yale University Art Gallery reveals the grid structure that underlies this work. A series of journal photographs from 1978 show Castoro working through the use of such arrangements of wooden elements in related works titled Pier Group and Tank Trap. In a telling inscription alongside these images is the phrase “an obstacle course for a dancer,” revealing the continued referencing of the dancer’s body in movement. These works address perception through perspective and heightened recession, a recurrence of the theme of infinity in Castoro’s work. For Mostyn, North Wales trees will be used to reflect the local context, laid in a grid overlooking the town’s local beaches.

Clare Harding, Interim Director, Mostyn, said, “We are thrilled to display this important outdoor work as a celebration of Rosemarie’s exhibition in Mostyn and to bring such an important work to life again, over 40 years after it was first made”

Werner Pichler, co-founder of the Estate of Rosemarie Castoro said, “To recreate Trap A Zoid is certainly a wonderful opportunity to bring one of Rosemarie’s large scale installations back to life! Already the photographs that document the installation from 1978 are very powerful. So I am sure that to actually stand in front of that work, life size, will be a remarkable experience. Since there are records of the diagrams which Rosemarie based her installation on, it will be possible to come up with an installation completely true to the artist’s intention. The Estate is very grateful to Mostyn and the Henry Moore Foundation for this extraordinary chance to show one of Rosemarie’s major outdoor art works, alongside with her works that will be shown in the museum”

The Rosemarie Castoro exhibition Carving Space remains open at Mostyn until February 25th, and includes works on paper, concrete poetry, wall relief work, sculptural pieces and archival material.