SEARSPORT, ME.- At a storage facility just off the highway in mid-coast Maine, a translucent monolith constructed from 5264 plastic egg cartons stands inside a Quonset hut—an industrial enclosure normally used to stockpile mounds of gravel, salt, or sand. But here, Carlos Reyes investigates a different kind of resource.
Inside the towering translucent structure, chicken eggs that have been hollowed, painted and chromed are suspended at regular intervals. Reyes has taken the residues of everyday American life—repetition, accumulation, constraint—and exposed them to fresh ocean air. Patent not pending, this flimsy architecture shimmers and sways, each cell reflecting and projecting light.
The installation continues in a row of self-storage units nearby. Exhausted treadmill belts, having reached the 30,000 mile mark, are now stretched into hollow cylinders, their interiors striated with past motion. Once on perpetual loop in New York City gyms, one is now suspended from the ceiling of a unit with a roll-up door; around the corner, two others, their rubber worn smooth from years of sweat and circulation. A fourth stands draped with a membrane of red lace inside the Quonset hut.
Eggs are a form of stored energy that embody the potential for life. Treadmills, by contrast, are designed to absorb excess energy in the most contained way possible. At this remote storage facility, Reyes brings together exhausted energy and dormant potential. Suspended in fragile homeostasis, these stacks and loops seem like they could go on forever. On the other hand, a strong breeze might knock them over at any second.
Carlos Reyes lives and works in New York. He has had recent solo exhibitions at Bodega, New York; Galerie Joseph Tang, Paris; White Flag Projects, St. Louis; and Arcadia Missa, London. Reyes has been featured in institutional exhibitions at the Palais de Tokyo, Paris; Futura Center for Contemporary Art, Prague; the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale; Hessel Museum of Art, Center for Curatorial Studies, Annandale-on-Hudson. His work is currently on view as part of Dust: Plates of the Present at Centre Pompidou in Paris. He has also presented work at Société, Berlin; Luxembourg and Dayan, New York; Tanya Leighton, Berlin; Bortolami, New York; and Praz Delavallade, Paris.
