Commonwealth · Carlos Reyes

Después de una flor, antes de un azul.

an aperture for sustained looking.
three works between a flower moon and a blue moon · May 2026

"Commonwealth is a very funny looking suit for Puerto Rico, but you must remember that
Puerto Rico has a very funny looking body."

Luis Muñoz Marín · The New York Times, May 1, 1980

Estado Libre Asociado

After a Flower, before a Blue.

PROMESA

Puerto Rico Oversight, Management, and Economic Stability Act

"To provide a method for a covered territory to achieve fiscal responsibility and access to the capital markets."

PROMESA, Sec. 101(a) · Public Law 114-187 · Signed June 30, 2016

PROMESA, 2021 · Soft Opening

Seven chrome floor lamps, single lampshade, custom circuitry · Live data · LUMA Energy

List Visual Arts Center, MIT · 2021 · El Museo del Barrio · 2024

Seven chrome floor lamps are conjoined by a single lampshade. The shade is extruded around a circular diameter to form a tapered ring. It appears suspended, even floating. The lightbulbs pulse slowly at varying speeds. Each lamp corresponds to one of the seven regions used by Puerto Rico's electric utility, Luma Energy. The duration and brightness of each strobe is continuously adjusted by custom circuitry according to the live data received and processed for their respective regions.

The work, PROMESA, 2021, begins with the real time output of Luma Energy's tracking of power outages in Puerto Rico. It uses the output of that count as its input, subjecting its numbers to digital and electronic distortions and modifications that manifest as another system entirely: the lighting in the gallery.

PROMESA is also the quality and duration of light in the room. While the spatiality of this light evinces a sense of intimacy as a condition of viewing, its simultaneity obviates the distant, disconnected relation to the scene from which its facticity derives.

— Zoey Lubitz, 2021

PROMESA, 2021 · Soft Opening

Seven chrome floor lamps, single lampshade, custom circuitry · Live data · LUMA Energy

List Visual Arts Center, MIT · 2021
El Museo del Barrio · 2024

2021 · MIT · Custom circuit board

Bespoke electronics. Seven regions of Puerto Rico's power grid, each mapped to a lamp. Outages translated into light. Design: Sam Wolk.

2024 · El Museo del Barrio · Circuit in the bulb

The entire circuit board now lives in the bulb. Transmitter and receiver embedded in the socket. One lamp tethered to Caguas — one to wherever it is installed. Architecture: Christopher Paddock.

images/promesa_mit.jpg

PROMESA, 2021

Seven chrome floor lamps, single lampshade, custom circuitry and computer program · Live data · LUMA Energy · List Visual Arts Center, MIT

images/promesa_caguas.jpg

PROMESA (Caguas), 2024

Lampshade, modified lamps, custom circuitry · Live data · LUMA Energy · El Museo del Barrio, New York

PROMESA (Caguas), 2024. Preparatory drawing. Courtesy the artist.

☉ ☽ ☿ ♀ ♂ ♃ ♄ ♅ ♆ ♇ ⚷ ☊ ⚸

The direction: Be loose and Be firm.
What's in the middle.
The bird sounds — disembodied and transmuted into the space.
The world of disembodied.
The balsam.

Balsamic · Moon crossing Pisces into Aries · Sun in Taurus

The last sliver before the dark. The cycle almost spent, still moving, not yet released.
Balsamic comes from balsam — tree sap. The aromatic resin that seeps from a wound. Balm comes from the same root. The phase named for what heals slowly, before rest.

The last sliver. Neither the old cycle nor the new.

Something in motion, reaching for ground.

Not just departure —

a constant searching for somewhere to land.

That's the tension in the balsamic. The last sliver before the dark is also the ambiguous thing that comes just before the new light.

♉ Taurus · New Moon · May 15–16

Freestyle Hard

2025 · The Shed, Hudson Yards · Frieze New York

IV

Field Recording

Caguas, Puerto Rico · May 6, 2026 · 9:25am

Freestyle Hard, 2025

The Shed, Hudson Yards · Frieze New York

Freestyle Hard · May 8, 2025 · Commissioned by Frieze New York · The Shed, Hudson Yards

Sounds

Emily Eagen
Bryan Fernandez
Jaden Gabriel
Jody Kruskal
Skip La Plante
Krystle Lee
Kevin Emilio Pérez
River L Ramirez
John Scaramucci
Rebecca Shenfeld
Peter Mills Weiss

–ou––

E–i–y Ea–e–
–ya– –e––a––e–
–a–e– –a––ie–
–o–y –u––a–
–i– –a –a––e
–y––e –ee
–e–i– E–i–io –é–e–
–i–e– –a–i–e–
–o–– ––a–a–u––i
–e–e––a –e––e––
–e–e– –i–– –ei––

Dedicated to the people whose stories, intentionally untold, nevertheless hold the past inside the four walls of their homes. They'll share if you ask. But they don't want you to ask.

—Anonymous, found note 2020

Blue Moon in Sagittarius · Sun in Gemini

A second full moon in a single month — the one that falls outside the ordinary count.
The definition spread by accident: a mistranslation in 1946 that stuck. The name may come from an Old English word meaning to betray — the moon that disrupts the expected pattern.

Sagittarius reaches toward the far horizon.

Gemini holds two languages at once.

The accent kept on purpose.

You don't wait for the target to stop. You release anyway.

♐

♐ Blue Moon · Sagittarius · May 31

A proposed public fountain. The form is a continuous spiral built from turnstile arms — sourced from transit infrastructure.

The mechanism that activates the water is cued to the recovery cycles of shift workers who attempt to sleep during the day. Workers whose hours run inverse to the public day. The disregulation of their rest is inseparable from the regularity of ours.

REM is the deepest, most absent state. The moment they're most gone from the order that requires them is when the public water runs. Not despite their absence — because of it.

The second moon is the beginning of the next cycle. The proposed work is the end of thinking and the beginning of making.

An adjective as a noun. Touching color. A dream. Workers, stress. The end of a cycle is the beginning.

Shift Work

Truck drivers. Nurses. Security guards. Sex workers.

The people whose rhythms keep everything running while everyone else sleeps.
Their sleep is now trackable.

At REM — the dream state —
the state furthest from labor —
the pressure is strongest.

Untitled Fountain (proposed) · Spiral form fabricated from turnstile arms · Site: Puerto Rico

Study · Single turnstile arm · Untitled Fountain

Study · Uncoiled arms in wave · Untitled Fountain

Study · Full spiral form · Untitled Fountain

illustrious-semolina-89423c.netlify.app