Carlos Carrillo (b. 1972) is a Mexican American multidisciplinary artist living and working in Austin, Texas. His practice spans sculpture, installation, painting, and light-based works, often integrating hand-drawn processes with industrial materials and systems-based structures. Across formats, Carrillo explores signal, memory, and presence—how meaning is transmitted, interrupted, or quietly sustained over time.

Carrillo received his BFA with Honors from the School of Visual Arts in New York in 2002. While at SVA, he studied with Jack Whitten, Tim Rollins, Frank Gillette, Suzanne Anker, and Andrew Ginzel. These relationships shaped an interdisciplinary approach grounded in material intelligence, experimentation, and long-term inquiry rather than fixed outcomes. During and after his studies, Carrillo worked extensively as an art handler and exhibition specialist in New York, framing and installing works for galleries and private collections—experience that deeply informed his understanding of scale, care, and spatial responsibility.

While studying at SVA, Carrillo began developing works using everyday technological and industrial materials. Shortly after graduating, he co-curated his first group exhibition, Low-tech Organics, which examined accessible materials, reuse, and spatial behavior. This inquiry later evolved into what he describes as tech nor ganic—an approach that continues to inform his studio practice.

Before art school, Carrillo’s early creative formation took place within skateboarding culture in the late 1980s and 1990s. Touring, DIY publishing, graphic design, and self-directed learning cultivated an instinctive understanding of rhythm, repetition, and risk—principles that continue to underpin his studio practice. A serious car accident in his early twenties ended his skateboarding career and marked a pivotal redirection toward art, leading to his move to New York City and eventual enrollment at SVA.

Carrillo’s work has been exhibited in New York, Los Angeles, and Houston, including presentations at White Box, Vito Acconci Studio, the Brooklyn Museum Community Project, and Tiger Strikes Asteroid. In 2024, he was selected to exhibit in the 2025 Texas Biennial in Houston, and he is currently preparing a collaborative suspended installation with Yevgenia Davidoff for a 2026 exhibition at the UMLAUF Sculpture Garden + Museum. He is an alumnus of the ICOSA Collective and has completed projection mapping studies at Dada Lab.

Alongside his studio practice, Carrillo has maintained a parallel professional career as an audiovisual systems engineer, specializing in large-scale environments, signal flow, and spatial experience. Rather than functioning as a separate identity, this technical discipline is embedded within his art practice, informing his use of exposed wiring, light structures, and architectural restraint. His works often operate as quiet systems—objects and environments that hold tension between fragility and structure, intuition and engineering.

Much of Carrillo’s sculptural work is intentionally ephemeral. Many early installations no longer exist, having been dismantled, lost, or allowed to disappear over time. This impermanence is not incidental, but central to his thinking about memory, transmission, and care. His current work emphasizes in-person experience, inviting viewers into spaces of slowed attention and sustained presence in contrast to the accelerated pace of contemporary digital life.

Carrillo works collaboratively with his partner, artist Yevgenia Davidoff, under the studio name CCYD Studio. Together, they continue to develop projects that merge material rigor, emotional clarity, and spatial sensitivity—creating works designed not for spectacle, but for encounter.