 Casa Malaparte, 2005 Oil on canvas, 106.6 x 127 cm, 42 x 50 in Enoc Perez Deluxe Faggionato Fine Arts is pleased to announce the first London solo exhibition of new works by the New York-based artist Enoc Perez. Perez paints images that have a personal and cultural significance. This new series of large-scale paintings, entitled "Deluxe", includes images of modernist hotels from his native Puerto Rico (Hotel Barranquitas), an Argentinean Bank designed by Clorinda Testa (Bank of London and South America, Buenos Airies), and Still Lifes derived from rum advertisements featuring Caribbean cocktails and fruit (Mardi Gras). These images point to a shared history of progressive optimism and touristic colonalism, at which Perez casts a dispassionate and simultaneously seductive eye. The word "deluxe", over-used in the 1950's by tourist brochures out to market dreams, finds a parallel in Perez's images of Caribbean hotels and aspirational advertising. Using found imagery, tourist postcards or snap shots, Perez tends to remove all extraneous information. Where architecture is his subject, this paring down is used to capture the fresh promise of a new building. These images characterise the optimism and modernism of a bygone era in which as Perez puts it, the buildings represented, "a better tomorrow" of luxury and glamour. But there is a void in these un-peopled scenes that is charged with the knowledge that many of the structures, which promised so much, have been changed, renovated, re-used and in some cases torn down. These are (as Perez describes them) "voluptuous paintings" of faded dreams: an unfulfilled Deluxe. Perez paints without brushes, using a technique which begins with a series of sketches derived from his found sources. Individual sketches are drawn up for each colour before oil paint is applied to the reverse and transferred onto the canvas in a process comparable to the mono-print technique. Lush, textured images gradually develop from the many layers (sometimes 30 or more). This seemingly laborious technique mimics the traditional colour separation and printing process of his source material and creates a rough abraded appearance, thus emphasizing the nostalgia of his source material. Enoc Perez was born in San Juan Puerto Rico in 1967. He lives and works in New York. Solo exhibitions include: Los Angeles, The Happy Lion, 2004; New York, Elizabeth Dee Gallery, 2002; Heilbronn, Kunstverein Heilbronn, 2002; Cologne, Galerie Michael Janssen, 2001; New York, Bronwyn Keenan Gallery, 1999; Dallas, Turner & Runyon, 1999. His work has also been included in numerous group shows, 2002, "Dear Painter" at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, (which later travelled to Frankfurt, Schirn Kunsthalle, and Vienna, Vienna Kunsthalle) and 2004, "The Undiscovered Country" at the UCLA Hammer Museum in Los Angeles. Exhibition: October 19 - December 9, 2005 Gallery hours: Mon-Fri 10 - 5.30 pm Faggionato Fine Arts 49 Albemarle St GB-London W1S 3JR Telephone + 44 20 74 09 79 79 Fax + 44 20 74 09 78 79 Email info@faggionato.com www.faggionato.com |
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