A child, a woman, a mother, a man, a father, a boss, a teacher, a police officer—they don't speak a language in general; they speak a language whose signifying features are tailored to the specific features of their facial expressions. Faces are not, in principle, individual; they define zones of frequency or probability, delimiting a field that preemptively neutralizes expressions and connections that rebel against dominant meanings.
*Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia* – Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, 1980.
The philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari developed a series of reflections on the concept of faciality, understanding it as a political and social regime that operates through the face. Thus, the face takes on aesthetic and semantic values that are not inherent to it a priori, but which serve to allow dominant groups to maintain control by suppressing “expressions and connections that rebel against dominant meanings.”
The art of Ernest Compta Llinàs conveys this artist and architect's awareness of faciality. He approaches this theme through portraiture, a historical genre that focuses precisely on the physiognomy of the people depicted, from a perspective most closely aligned with the faithful representation of the subject. Compta paints portraits that, nevertheless, are anonymous, denying the viewer the possibility of identification. This echoes the concept of faciality, as it takes refuge in the apparent individualization of the subject—"each face is unique"—to conceal its function, which is to legitimize certain faces over others, classifying them and deeming them normative or not. Ultimately, it generalizes them. Through anonymity, our protagonist makes visible the impossibility of an identifiable face, always embedded in power dynamics that impede its aesthetic-semiotic free will: they annul, or at least constrain, the constitution of individuality.
However, he also manages to subvert this fateful condition, since his “portraits” possess an autonomy that liberates them from the portrayed figure; there is something absolute in their singular expression that transcends identity. Within them unfold circuits that refer to themselves as productions that overflow the limits of codified personal traits (see Santiago Díaz, “The Portrait, Teratogenesis of the Face: Aesthetic-Political Devices of the Visible and Sensitive Counter-Pedagogies,” *Revista de Educación, UNMaP*, XIII, no. 25, 2022). The refusal to depict a specific face prevents its subsequent categorization, especially given Compta's non-realistic approach to physiognomy. Thus, the painter maintains a post-Cubist style: the faces of his subjects are geometric, generally angular, somewhat Picasso-esque. In this sense, they allow for a distancing from reality through anti-naturalism. Unclassifiable physiognomies that liberate and break with the classical aesthetic of portraiture, which tends toward embellishment and the indirect enhancement of facial features. Furthermore, Compta's portraits go even further on an aesthetic level, entering the semiotic realm, given the specific configuration of the subjects' less-than-pleasant features. These give rise to the channeling of feelings and emotions linked to sadness, melancholy, and rejection, alluding to the marginality of "rebellious expressions and connections"; to the suffering they endure, regardless of whether it constitutes rebellion.
Andrea García Casal, art historian and theorist