Carlos Reyes

Through installations constructed in a variety of media ranging from glass and cedarwood to bread, velvet and foam, Carlos Reyes’ practice playfully softens the polarities separating fragility and monumentality. Reyes’ earlier works distil a sense of tenderness, often elegantly cast in orange glass yet trussed up with harsh metal armatures. Through the sensual fluidity and translucence of their forms, Reyes’ glass works threaten to liquidise and ooze onto the gallery floor. In recent installations, Reyes has displayed old treadmill belts – monuments to cyclicality, energy depletion and travel without destination – and used salvaged remnants to reassemble a Manhattan bathhouse and queer social space, recapturing a fragmented notion of the original space and exploring the contrast between absence and presence. Encapsulated by the porcupine quill found in one of Reyes’ glass works, painstakingly trapped in amber, his practice seeks to interrupt the cyclicality of time, and to use this paused moment to reflect on mass production, affection and sentimentality. ...

Founded in 2018 by Antonia Marsh, Soft Opening presents UK-based and international emerging contemporary artists, and often their first solo presentations in London. Focusing on work pushing the conventional limits of medium or material, the gallery presents a wide range of media and practices. Soft Opening built its early program with projects that responded to the gallery’s unique first location in Piccadilly Circus Underground Station. Opening a second space in East London in 2019 saw programming strategy develop as Soft Opening began participating in international art fairs and representing artists. Programming is now focused at this East London space. In 2020 the gallery began publishing artist monographs - the first was with Tenant of Culture in 2020 followed by Gina Fischli in 2021 and Sin Wai Kin in 2022. ...