The Argentine artist RES, working with collaborator Constanza Piaggio, has produced a remarkable new series entitled Conatus. Each piece is a painstaking recreation of an iconic piece of western art by painters such as Velazquez, da Vinci, and Picasso. In the process of translating the original work from canvas to photograph, RES makes alterations that recontextualize the subject and its themes through contemporary perspectives on spirituality, philosophy, politics, and the centuries-old process of image-making. The resulting large-scale photographs are powerful and brooding, yet strangely beautiful, like fragments of a dream that one struggles to remember.

The artist was born in Córdoba, Argentina in 1957. He studied photography in the School of Arte Lino E. Spilimbergo (Córdoba) and in Casa del Lago, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (Mexico D.F.). He currently lives in Buenos Aires.