It's Like Butter

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• Francesco Lo Castro

It's a rather difficult task for Francesco Lo Castro to describe his steadily growing success. After all, he admits he was nearly dead a year ago from the strain of being a curator. "I really almost had a heart attack," Lo Castro says. "I left that line of work to save myself." Now that once-endangered heart is steadily beating and overflowing with gratitude after the noted success of his current solo exhibition at the Butter Gallery called "Recent Works." Described as a "love letter to Miami," Lo Castro's exhibit offers glimpses of Miami's hipster underground culture thrown onto larger-than-life canvases. From ceiling to floor, images of Miami burlesque dancers, performance artists, writers, musicians and visual artists loom large over curious spectators. "I guess I was mainly concerned with representing all the people that were in the portraits properly. I wanted to make sure I didn't portray anyone in a bad light. All those things really hinged on the individual looking at the portraits for the first time...but everyone seemed very much pleased, so I worried for nothing," the artist continues. The exhibition opened to a devoted contingency of Butter Gallery fans and patrons, clearly impressed with Lo Castro's striking detail and skilled, yet approachable, style. Local band BFGF arrived later in the evening, at which point Lo Castro says that "it felt more like a family gathering than an exhibition."
Nov. 24-Dec. 1, noon, 2010