Reyes works out of a former ship-repair workshop near the port, a room that still smells faintly of oil. Motors are stacked along one wall in the order he found them; a lathe he restored himself sits in the middle like an altar. We spoke over two afternoons in March, with the door open to the water.
Finding the machine
On scrapyards, held potential, and what a dead engine still contains.
Your works often begin as discarded machines. What draws you to them?
A machine at rest still hums with everything it could do. That is what I am after — the held potential. There is a dignity in a thing that worked hard for thirty years and was thrown away in an afternoon.
How do you choose one?
Badly, mostly. I go to the yards at Saint-Louis without a list. If I can tell what a machine was for within ten seconds, I leave it. The interesting ones make you stand there and work it out.
And if you can't work it out at all?
Then it comes home with me. There is a compressor in the corner I have owned for six years and still don't understand. It is not a work yet. It might never be.
Repair as argument
Why mending something is a position, not a hobby.
There is a strong sense of repair in the work. Is that a political position?
Repair is a political act. To mend something is to refuse the logic that says it is disposable — and that logic is not only applied to machines.
I am not sentimental about it. Some things should be scrapped. But the decision should be made by someone who knows how the thing works, and increasingly nobody does.
Does it matter to you that a viewer knows what the original machine did?
Not really. It matters that they can see it was something. The wear marks do that better than a wall label ever could.
Repair is a political act.
What comes next
Quiet engines, and a gallery that breathes.
What are you making now?
A series of quiet engines. Pieces that move almost imperceptibly — you notice after a minute that the room is not still. I want the gallery to feel like it is breathing.
Is there a risk that becomes too gentle?
Yes. If it is only pleasant, I have failed. There should always be a moment where you wonder whether the thing is safe.
Chronology
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2003
Trains as a marine engineer
Six years in ship repair at the Vieux-Port.
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2009
Takes the workshop
Moves into the former repair shed he still works in.
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2015
First moving work
A winch motor, re-geared to turn once an hour.
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2021
Found Industry begins
The series that becomes the current exhibition.
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2026
Quiet engines
New work in progress at the time of this conversation.
Mentioned in this conversation
- The Craftsman Richard Sennett, 2008
- Shop Class as Soulcraft Matthew Crawford, 2009
- Saint-Louis scrapyards, Marseille Where most of the material comes from