I have always believed that there is some determinism or caprice in childhood memories that are jealously guarded in mind. Especially when it comes to images and names that, still in adulthood, remain paradigms of what nation, or autochthonous things mean.
Fernando Reyna’s personality is related to such events: observer, communicative, methodical and rational. Reyna is immersed in the investigation of human being within the social sphere, metaphysical exercise that leads him to a chronic of different contemporary phenomena as a way to respond, from his role as an artist, a universal question: who are we?
Hence his production favors experimentation with language. Whether from the styles unification of the twentieth century avant-garde, work with scale and typography, and the use of the notorious character of various objects and spaces that bring him to the ready made implementation; his solutions are supported by the benefits of each demonstration. The painting, because tradition is still useful to question the present and conceptualism because of its provocative and destabilizing nature, essentially serving as the element that makes a review from within the institutional system.
Precisely at this level is where the artist is interested in getting his thoughts about human being, present and identity. Likewise, his passion for literature has become a tool for identifying himself with the Cuban thought and from knowledge of the nineteenth century intellectuals; to build an intertextual link with contemporary circumstances. The text is then reused as sort of remainder after the match of a previous creation, as bearer of a time and a story.
Finally, this obsession with language has culminated in a taste for diasporic processes in the field of artistic and literary culture, as a representation of Cuban culture. Hence he has also focused on migration; important phenomenon of our culture, populated by incomplete pages. Therefore, in an attempt to fill these empty spaces, the artist, without prejudice, retakes picture, knowing its status of memory trigger.
While language remains essential to Reyna, as manipulating artifact, the historic document randomly found, a source of knowledge, and the ravings of being as entity , a way of understanding the human essence; he will continue weaving temporary bridges for the bailout of memory and our identity. Perhaps through opposing materials which when unified stand as metaphor of implications of being and self-affirming just native.
