Stone Scissor Paper

Darío Castillejos, Profound Anger, January 18, 2017.

The Mexican anatomy harbours anger so deep-rooted that the country is tearing its ribcage apart to be heard. The cartoonist is there listening in, giving it a visual presence of the sound so that we shall hear. So that we will understand.

Darío Castillejos, Corruption, September 30, 2017.

Shapes in bold volumes; foreshortenings in bold perspectives; highlights against deep shadowing: Darío Castillejos is working within the grand tradition of cartooning, reaching back from José Guadalupe Posada in the 19th century, who in turn inspired the muralists and cartoonists alike of the next generation. That is as grandiose a scale and outlook in art, which art history has ever seen, and Darío Castillejos is a worthy descendant two centuries later.

Darío Castillejos, Change of Bone.

His reaching across the centuries accentuates the deep-rootedness of the problems of our day and age. Man is all too ready to be corrupted and when we see the same problem across time, we understand how the undermining of society is not just stemming from crime as such, but from the organization of crime.

Organized crime as a means of social progression, as the chance to change one's status in society with the added glow of heroism when successful.

Corruption as a creator of mobility in society, however, is the antithesis of society or should we say, deformation of society to give it a visual expression. Darío Castillejos defines the deformation by emphasizing how no one is ever acting in isolation.

Everyone before us have grown together into new formations, which at first glance seems exactly that, a unity until he pressures our eyes to continue across the formation, forcing them to make a sharp turn, the sudden movement that leads us to see money changing hands or to the realization of who carries the burden of it all.

Darío Castillejos, Globalized Conflicts, June 29, 2016.

Those who carry it all remain outside: those at the lowest end of the ladder remain scattered, fearful of the next blow, continuing to carry the weight out of the very the very fear of what happens should they collapse. 

Darío Castillejos, Armed Intolerance, Jun 14, 2016.

Darío Castillejos creates texture as if his works were carved with a knife on the printing slate. At times they are.

His pen-as-knife juxtaposes highlighting with the density of the line. His figures are greasy in their greed or unwavering in their hide of metal while in stone as the institutions of society they loom monumentally to the side of the powerful.

Corruption is but one corner of what troubles society. Underneath its fellow troublemakers such as injustice, discrimination and violence, lie the basic components of human life in which greed and vanity have been allowed to create the pattern of society for too long.

Darío Castillejos, Justice in Crisis, 2014.

The imbalance is in every way a reality, with journalists losing their lives while doing their job. It is a struggle of the paper against stronger structures of the metal and stone, but he does so with the insistence of the importance of afterthought. Darío Castillejos lays the truth before us with the frankness of daring to look it in the eyes and sharing it with us. 

Darío Castillejos, October 25, 2014:
"The lady looks familiar to me..."

The cartoons shown are courtesy of Darío Castillejos and must not be reproduced without his permission.