Niels Reyes and the obsession with faces

Lilo, obra de Niels Reyes en Galería Máxima
Lilo, paint by Niels Reyes at Galería Máxima

To stop and look at a painting by Niels Reyes is to enter a singular world of textures that intertwine between the spectator and the portrait, a sort of visual conflict that drives you into the world of this talented artist, who adds prestige to the catalog of Maxima gallery.

A lover of visual content, whether in the format of television, film, plastic arts or even literary imagery, Niels draws on all these elements to study painting, a routine he performs almost unconsciously, as he confessed to us in an interview on the occasion of his 43rd birthday.

Several of his works enjoy the preference of our followers who love the best of contemporary Cuban art, where his portraits seem to be in a constant game of glances, while at other times he immerses us in the inner world of the artist and his work.

What motivates you and what allows you to express portraiture?

I actually do less portraiture than I think I do. Because I work with the face, people think that generically what I do is portraiture. I was always interested from the beginning, because of the characteristics of the face, to awaken many subtle sensations and feelings in us, who are biologically made for that.

It always seemed to me that it was a very used genre and it suited me very well. A genre like this is important to confront that great tradition, which has become an obsession.
There is something there that stops being portrait and face to become pure painting, a depth that has to do with many things: appreciation, time... it is very complex to explain.

In the piece "The Family" we can see something more than a portrait, we can see full body figures, will we see more works of this type?

I am really like a sensor. In the case of this piece it was a feeling I had, I wanted to see what would happen if the work lost intensity when I moved away. Beyond everything it represents, for me it is a problem of intensity and quality of the process.

It is an emotion that comes with the times, right now we are in that feeling that everything takes distance and how to maintain the intensity in that sense. In the confinement I have returned to the face because it allows me another metaphysical dialogue with painting and that was left as a stand by. I work cyclically in the processes.

The degree of realism you give to the eyes is striking. How do you achieve it?

It is a pictorial secret, but apart from being a secret, it has to do with how I build the work. I play a lot with perception and many times it is not so much the realism in the eye, but what surrounds it, which enhances that intensity in the gaze. It is a plastic game that has its secrets and takes a lot of study.

In several of your works it is somewhat difficult to identify a genre to the face, what makes you opt for this figuration?

It is a process that comes naturally, I do not know if it is a mannerism of mine when it comes to painting. Everything tends to that, somehow I start with the image or a contrast of light, a sensation and then I play with that and as it has many layers, sometimes it becomes a man and sometimes a woman, there are traces of layers and processes and I am very interested in the hybrid that remains there, undefined.

I almost never give it a sex, unless it is evident, for me it is secondary the idea of who the portrayed person is or what gender he/she has, everything that is discussed. I am always looking for a micro-expression, it is like painting the same thing over and over again, looking to "upgrade", it is like doing the same thing with variations. The story and the line is in the processes and it is a mechanism I have to seduce the viewer, to leave him in that ambiguity, as much in the center as possible.

In a previous interview you emphasized that "what persists in your painting is the constant enigma". What other enigmas are yet to come?

In painting, at least that's how it has happened to me, the more time goes by and the deeper one goes into what the dialogue with ideas becomes secondary and one goes as a hunter of something new that emerges.
It is always the same constant in my work. It is born from the pressure of what humanity is, what we are and what we are doing here. The faces and stories that I have painted and everything that is painting has to have that same emotional charge.

I am a sensor that changes with time and situations. That for me is the true register, a register that on the one hand works the unconscious, the emotional and what passes through my body and expresses my feelings. The other part is that I have less and less concerns in that sense, it is not that I don't have ideas or things I want to transmit, but that I transform them into other things.
The most difficult thing in painting for me now is enthusiasm, to find something new that makes you want to continue painting. Sometimes you achieve something and then you get tired of it. The main thing is that constant search, discovering it in a work and that it is solved in another and leads to another problem.

What makes you choose women's faces?

It is a genre that has also been treated throughout history and will continue to be treated. Within Cuban painting I have also been very interested in the avant-garde movement... Servando, Portocarrero, all those painters reflected women in some way and as a topic I have always been interested in it.

Sometimes I collide with what the painting transforms, sometimes I'm painting a girl and she transforms into another person and vice versa, it's something I'm not looking for, although sometimes I have an impression or a real face that I saw in a photo, or in a movie, so there I have material to work with.

Do you have any other passion besides painting?

I consume a lot of audiovisuals. I used to play a lot of chess. I'm obsessed with painting. I'm thinking about it all the time, when I'm not working I'm thinking about it.

I also consume a lot of visual culture. I read a lot and watch movies and series. I meditate on these questions and themes always emerge, very slowly. It also has to do with exchanges I've had with other artists, new works I've met, I'd say it's like studying, I'm always studying.

22/10/2020