{"status":true,"msg":{"data":{"id":22241,"auction_id":24,"set_id":43,"lot_number":"147","artist":"Marc Aran Reyes (b. 1996)","title":"Serene","starting_price":1000000,"signed_dated":"dated 2021 ","medium":"oil on canvas ","size":"84\" x 54\" (213 cm x 137 cm)","property":null,"coa":null,"provenance":null,"exhibited":null,"literature":null,"write_up":"by PAO VERGARA
\nFor as long as painters have painted, the photorealistic style and technique has been oft used to achieve verisimilitude, that is, accuracy with how the human eye perceives the world. It eschews the “distortion” of other styles like Impressionism in favor of perspective, lighting and shadow, and other details which match reality.
\nEnter Marc Aran Reyes, known for deploying photorealism to recreate not the waking world, but the dream-world, a realistic surrealist, so to speak. This style carries over to 2021’s Serene while also adding new elements that contrast with earlier works.
\nWhere earlier works appear dislocated, with backgrounds only hinted at by mists or an endless sea, here, a mountain range with visible crags and crannies keeps sentinel over a lake or sea.
\nThis is notable, as Reyes states that the work’s title, which means calmness as a state of mind or of things, also draws from an older meaning of the word: “a clear sky and calm sea.” The way the mountains and woman are reflected on the water, all under a setting (or rising?) moon denotes this.
\n Once again, Reyes uses a monochromatic palette to haunting effect, haunting, not in a way that spooks, but in a way that makes the unknown familiar, home-like even. Reyes adds that a theme he wants to explore here is one’s personal space, a safe personal space.
\n Finally, a most notable departure from previous works is the visibility of the subject’s face, not hidden by hair or by having her back turned to us. One might be tempted to see the woman as possessed, awake but not truly conscious, but the confident grace in her posture – reminiscent of the black, Asian, and Caucasian girls in the art-house music video Butterfly – suggests that she willed herself into this dream-world, rather than being abducted into it.
\n It’s as if she’s levitating from a portal leading from this world to the one in Reyes’ stark canvas, a portal which happens to be a tiny island. Perhaps, the link to “our” world is the fishbowl next to the girl. But the serenity, the determination, on her face suggests that she wants to enjoy her newly uncovered world.
\nPerhaps freedom isn’t so much the state of the seas outside, but of the ocean within; a fish leaving its bowl, thus discovering wider waters.","lot_group":"PAINTING","lot_details_html":"
Marc Aran Reyes (b. 1996) Serene dated 2021 oil on canvas 84\" x 54\" (213 cm x 137 cm)