Manuel Solano at Peres Projects

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Solano's might seem cloying because its sleeves are so obvious with themes and questions. A painter who can't see their paintings, like dutch artists dying before their fame, a childhood lost through the sieve of VHS decay. Is memory the same thing as seeing? Does the memory exist better the mind of the painter than the paint, than the VHS? Does the record recall better than what we contain? Is the painting always a failed handshake? Our paintings ostensibly live on past us, past our eyes. These only catalyze the already running processes of time. Like painting beyond your death.

Not sure our paintings need to be so cultivatedly disinterested, nor esoteric in questions. These are fine illustrations of the problem.

Manuel Solano at Carlos/Ishikawa

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The blind painter, it's like a Borges story, we see the creation the creator cannot. The preloaded failure in communication, the age old question whether the tree in my mind is the tree in yours. Why was it important for culture to keep dinosaurs lizard like - we were afraid of boys constricted by feather boas? Puffs with teeth underneath? If these dinosaurs are flamboyant then Jurassic Park's are alt-right. We're not even sure we're looking at the same thing. Different trees.