(...) I want all this marked in my face. We are the real countries, not the boundaries drawn on maps with the names of powerful men. (1)
Michael Ondaatje
As sculptor and modeller of the human faces, I have to point out the complexity of one of the purest and most rightous artistic schemas of our history namely the portrait, however through the camera of my friend and artist manué Reyes.
To understand the study of those portraits one should take in account the methodological aspects, which become a real challenge in terms of technical development, and on the other hand the psychological aspects that reveal the uniqueness and identity of a work.
In each portrait, we find a detailed study of the parts of the face, defining its shapes and contours. For instance the nose, eye, ear, mouth... are not defined as a straightforward form, but as connection of a series of masses that are articulated to set up an idea.
Black and white photography highlights the qualities of the face, the light traces, that make the expressions richer and in addition gives the possibility to appreciate the gradual changes, which are being produced to reach the interior of the bowels.
manué uses all the technical possibilities of representation in its widest sense to achieve his goal. With his inseparable camera he seeks to enhance all records of this plastic landscape by selecting the best combinations of the day, sensing the wide variety of situations that the present scenario offers in order to check which character lives through that glance.
manue Reyes’ camera prepares the ground, prior to the sowing, vital to have a good crop. Compacted soil must be broken and upturned to be oxygenated. Weed and remains of previous crops have to be destroyed to accelerate the development of a new entity that reinforces that "not named, not theorized, non-formal, perhaps somehow freer aesthetic ".
Departing from here our friend and artist sets a series of strategies which tighten his evolution, rendering it more rigorous and intuitive.
Congratulations my friend and do not leave your lane.
Miguel Ángel Jiménez Mateos
Sculptor and Tenured Professor of Sculpture at the Faculty of Fine Arts of Seville
(1) Editor’s note: the author made a free interpretation of a part of a note in Katharine Clifton's diary(novel: The english patient): My darling, I'm waiting for you — how long is a day in the dark, or a week? The fire is gone now, and I'm horribly cold. I really ought to drag myself outside but then there would be the sun. . . I'm afraid I waste the light on the paintings and on writing these words. We die, we die rich with lovers and tribes, tastes we have swallowed, bodies we have entered and swum up like rivers, fears we have hidden in, like this wretched cave. I want all this marked in my body. We are the real countries, not the boundaries drawn on maps with the names of powerful men. I know you will come and carry me out into the palace of winds. That's all I've wanted — to walk in such a place with you, with friends, on earth without maps. The lamp is gone now, and I'm writing in the darkness.