Enoc Perez: New Work

Galerie Michael Janssen is pleased to present Enoc Perez' second solo exhibition at the end of October 2008.

As last show of the year, the gallery will exhibit New York based painter Enoc Perez with a new series of his intriguing large scale architectural paintings and still life oil on paper works.

Born in San Juan, Puerto Rico in 1967, Enoc Perez is the son of a prominent art critic, and as a result was well versed in art history and modern art as a youth. When he arrived in New York in 1986, he aimed to perpetuate the progress of painting as defined by Modernism, taking Warhol as a key figure to study.

Beginning with a photograph, Perez transfers it onto canvas by redrawing it with a pencil. Mimicking the four-color printing process, he visually separates the colors from his photographic source and makes multiple identical drawings of his subject in each color. He then applies a single color of paint to the reverse of the drawing and attaches it to the top of the canvas so that the paint faces its surface and transfers the pigment by tracing on the drawing that correspond to the color of the image. The process is repeated for each color until the painting is complete. This complex technique creates the rich texture of painting without the use of a brush.

Perez's paintings of famous New York modernist skyscrapers hauntingly evoke a mid-century optimism that vanished after 9/11. Despite their representational images, these canvases also function as abstractions in which the artist indulges in the process of painting. Landmarks such as Mies van der Rohe's Seagram Building, Le Courbusier's United Nations building, and Eero Saarinen's futuristic TWA terminal at New York's John F. Kennedy Airport reflect the utopian ideal of internationalism.

Enoc Perez
New Work