Carlos Reyes: 18
Sculpture is a primary medium for Carlos Reyes, the New York- and Puerto Rico-based artist, whose works are concerned with material investigations of infrastructure, architecture, and other designed objects that we encounter in our built environments.
His elegant sculptures feature found materials that bear traces of their former use, such as graffiti-etched cedar planks salvaged from a bathhouse and “exhausted” treadmill belts stretched and scuffed from wear. Other works cannily recast everyday items—plastic supermarket egg cartons and IKEA lamps, for instance—into sculptural configurations. While the austere forms of many of Reyes’s sculptures and installations cite those of Minimalism, they refocus its historical emphasis on industrial finish to instead foreground visible residues—whether embodied energy like breath and touch, or transitory forces like light and heat—that are exerted on objects and architectural elements over time. In doing so, Reyes indexes human activity within spaces and systems that are socially or politically produced, and gestures towards the networks of circulation, use, and exchange that shape these movements.
This interview with Carlos Reyes, was conducted in conjunction with “Carlos Reyes: 18" installed at the List Visual Arts Center (October 27, 2023–March 10, 2024).