What is RETNA? The question surfaces at shows, in interviews. Audiences want the alphabet explained — what it means, where it comes from. The truth is simpler than they expect. The symbols came from everywhere — Arabic script encountered growing up in LA, Egyptian marks from books, Gothic letters on old records, Chicano writing on the walls of his neighborhood. The artist took pieces of all of it and built something that belongs to him alone. To nobody else. That is the point. The work shown in the image — those white sculptures, the ones that read as three-dimensional letters given physical form — that is the alphabet leaving the wall and entering the room. You can walk around it, see it from every side. The meaning does not shift. It is not intended to be decoded. It is intended to be experienced. The essence of RETNA is not in what the letters say. It is in how they make you feel when you stand in front of them.
