DoKa FOCUS #1
Horacio Reyes páez
Horacio Reyes Páez
'The questions that matter and the ones that will show up in your art depend on introspection, your inner development.'
FOCUS #1
'My pursuit is always to use poetry as a bridge to understand what cannot be said, what cannot be seen or felt through the ordinary senses.'
Horacio Reyes Páez was born in Montevideo, Uruguay in 1987.
Coming from a family of renowned Uruguayan artists (Páez Vilaró Family) he started his work as a filmmaker and photographer when he got his first analogue and videotape cameras at age 16.
Through his family he had a deep and early contact with plastic arts and was introduced to the world of classical music by his mother Agó Páez Vilaró. Also through his father, the recognised Uruguayan advertising creative José María Reyes Delgado, he was nurtured first hand from the most important school of communicators in Montevideo.
Apart from visual storytelling, Páez’s strong potential with music was shown when he started playing his first Bach preludes on classical guitar at the age of ten, passion that led him to become a classical music performer and composer.
He concluded his studies as a film director in 2012 at the Universidad del Cine in Buenos Aires. Since then he has worked as a director in many short-films, documentaries, and commercial pieces.
Parallel to this, his musical career led him to settle in Vienna, Austria, and was invited to study classical guitar with consecrated guitar maestro, Alvaro Pierri (MDW).
Reyes Paez now works as a director, cinematographer and photographer, writer and producer in the city of Vienna, as also continues to work in Uruguay and Argentina.
Parallel to this, his musical career led him to settle in Vienna, Austria, and was invited to study classical guitar with consecrated guitar maestro, Alvaro Pierri (MDW).
Reyes Paez now works as a director, cinematographer and photographer, writer and producer in the city of Vienna, as also continues to work in Uruguay and Argentina.
What drives you to create and share your work?
‘Since I was a child I felt a strong connection to the beauty of nature and felt that there was something behind it, an invisible language that I had to articulate by any means.
I felt it clearly for the first time by the end of spring – beginning of summer- back in Uruguay while we were at a singing class at school, I was around seven years old.
The teacher opened the doors that led to the schoolyard as warmer weather was already present. There was an Anacahuita (our native tree) about to bloom in the middle of the school yard.
This beautiful combination of elements, sound, comfortable warmth and visual elements were speaking to me inside as something that I now understand as a poetic experience.
The world as it manifests is the drive itself, it is the fuel for making poetry. I try to dive into the essence of the things that surround me to find inspiration to create, as I understand that what I see as “the outer world” is only speaking about my inner world. That is where I find meaning to my work.’
Who do you create for? Who do you like to reach and what message do you like to get across?
‘I am incarnated in this life, on this planet, and I feel that apart from being an individual, we are going through a social experience.
I create for myself and for others at the same time, but this wouldn’t be possible if I don’t practice a process of individual, biographical introspection.
There is no specific message I want to deliver as I feel I don’t want to make my work so hermetic so that there is only one message behind the work.
My pursuit is always to use poetry as a bridge to understand what cannot be said, what cannot be seen or felt through the ordinary senses.
Poetry can lead to multiple meanings that are not understood through pure reason, but from our intuitive cognition.
I believe there are invisible worlds behind what we see not only in the subatomic sense of understanding matter, but in the sense of what is spiritual in all creation.
I think poetry is one of the means to explore what is spiritual in the human being and the universe.’
What role do you (fore)see for visual storytellers in our hectic and fast-changing world?
‘I think that the need of making art so literal towards a political message is killing the magic of storytelling and the magic of art itself.
We can say that human material life, for now, cannot exist without the political element as many other elements which are intrinsic to present human life.
But I believe that this political element tackled in such a literal and materialistic way, cannot rule artistic expression.
I believe art is what makes us travel to unimaginable realms of spiritual experience, fantasy, imagination, making us heal wounds in the human soul, sometimes even making us change our life’s path.
I think that true storytelling, art, has a huge risk of losing its purpose when used merely as a vessel of an ideological or political message.
I think art is not at the service of politics, it does not serve an ideology, it’s not useful when it takes part in dividing humanity or as a moralist tool telling us what is right or wrong.
Art serves something much greater than that.’
Best decision(s) made so far in your career?
‘To stop thinking that external solutions would solve my internal problems.
Technical stuff can be solved with a user’s manual or a photography workshop.
But the questions that matter and the ones that will show up in your art depend on introspection, your inner development.
Silencing external voices as much as I can to start listening to my own internal voice is the biggest exercise for me to be able to articulate my own artistic language.’
Horacio Reyes Páez
Silencing external voices as much as I can to start listening to my own internal voice is the biggest exercise for me to be able to articulate my own artistic language.'
FOCUS #1
What advice would you give to aspiring storytellers taking their first steps in getting their story out there?
‘Commitment to your craft, commitment to yourself. I had a great music teacher who always told me, when you play in concert you have to be 50% mind and 50% heart.
Commitment with perfecting our craft will improve the way we deliver our art, it will make our language understandable. Craft must be connected to the other 50%, your heart.
Commitment with ourselves, to that which is unique in us, commitment to that introspective work will deliver a fresh point of view.
It has to do with accepting who you are, the humbling experience of finding substance for art both in our defects and our virtues without judging.
Nobody is perfect and that is what makes art interesting.’
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