Focusing on the decay and fading beauty of the environment of the Miami River, Carlos Manuel creates images, which are at once vibrant, alive with color and informed by an intellectual understanding of academic tradition. Here we see references to the raw colorist palette of the abstract expressionists and the cool detachment of the pop movement. The images are pure composition, and their photo-reality becomes most startling when the abstract gives way to the recognizable.

"a rusted metal plate becoming an evocative sunset..."