Valhalla 1978

Alex Castro's "Valhalla" is a delicate dance of marks on paper. I imagine Castro, a printmaker, gently coaxing these quiet forms into being. The colour palette is muted, almost ghostly. Close up, you can see a textured surface, built up through thin layers, like sediment. The lines are tentative, broken, and punctuated by star-like shapes. It reminds me of a celestial map or some kind of notation system. I wonder if Castro was pondering the idea of Valhalla, a paradise for warriors, while he made it. There is a kind of shorthand at play – a lexicon of lines and dots. As a painter myself, I know how a single gesture can carry a whole world of feeling. Maybe Castro was thinking about Carl Andre's minimalist sculptures when he made this. All artists are, in the end, engaged in a shared visual language, always riffing off one another. It is a conversation across time. What does it say to you?