A child, a woman, a mother, a man, a father, a boss, a teacher, a police officer—none of them speak a language in general; they speak a language whose significant features correspond to the specific traits of faciality. Faces are not, in principle, individual; they defend zones of frequency or probability, delimiting a field that neutralizes in advance the expressions and connections that rebel against dominant significations. “A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia” – Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, 1980. Philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari developed a set of reflections around the concept of faciality, understood as a political and social regime that becomes operative through the face. The face acquires aesthetic and semantic values that are not inherent to it a priori, but that serve dominant groups in maintaining control, suppressing “the expressions and connections that rebel against dominant significations.” Ernest Compta Llinàs’s visual work reveals the artist’s and architect’s awareness of the dynamics of faciality. He addresses it through portraiture—a historical genre centered precisely on the physiognomy of the subjects represented, and traditionally associated with the faithful depiction of the sitter. Yet Compta paints portraits that remain anonymous, denying viewers the possibility of identifying the subjects. This echoes the notion of faciality, which hides its function behind the apparent individualization of subjects—“each face is unique”—while in reality legitimizing certain faces, classifying them, and deeming them normative or not. In short, generalizing them. Through anonymity, the artist highlights the impossibility of the identity-bearing face, always inserted within power structures that impede its aesthetic and semiotic free will: they annul—or at least constrain—the constitution of individuality. However, he also manages to subvert this bleak condition, for his “portraits” possess an autonomy that frees them from the figure portrayed. There is something absolute in their singular expression that exceeds identity. They unfold circuits that refer back to themselves as productions that overflow the limits of codified personal traits (see Santiago Díaz, “El retrato, teratogénesis del rostro: dispositivos estético-políticos de lo visible y contrapedagogías sensibles,” Revista de Educación, UNMaP, XIII, no. 25, 2022). The refusal to depict a specific face prevents subsequent categorization, all the more so given the treatment of physiognomy in Compta’s work, which is not realistic. The painter maintains a post-Cubist style: geometrizing, generally angular, somewhat Picasso-like faces. In this sense, they foster distance from reality through anti-naturalism. These unclassifiable physiognomies liberate and break away from the classical aesthetics of portraiture, which tends toward beautification and the indirect reinforcement of faciality. Furthermore, Compta’s portraits go even further aesthetically and move into the semiotic realm through the configuration of the subjects’ harsh features. These features channel emotions linked to sadness, melancholy, and rejection, evoking the marginality of “the expressions and connections that rebel”—the suffering they endure, even when not rising into outright revolt. Andrea García Casal, art historian and theorist