Biography of Enoc Perez
Puerto Rican artist Enoc Perez (b. 1967) began painting at the age of eight, and has been doing so ever since to great critical acclaim. His unique practice, centered around human emotion and experience, is informed primarily by history, art, architecture and the urban landscape.
Enoc Perez’ most iconic works are depictions of modernist buildings imbued with an air of nostalgia for the utopian dreams that inspired their construction. Modernist architecture, arguably the most influential architecture of the 20th century, was driven by a desire to shape and improve the ways people lived and to create the ultimate urban lifestyle. The buildings were created to meet human needs, with functionality at their core. Modernism’s greatest architects believed passionately in the power and influence of their creations, and it is this profound faith in the value of their creations that Enoc Perez resonates with. Perez has never questioned art-making, or sought alternative forms of expression, but instead believes deeply in the possibilities of the mediums he has mastered.
Influenced by Pop Art and Warhol’s revolutionary silkscreens, Enoc Perez became fascinated with print-making early on in his career, and to this day it remains of primary importance in his oeuvre. Taking photographs of landmarks as his starting point, he merged the screen-printing technique with painting in his own inventive form of printing. Paint was applied to several sheets of paper and then transferred on to the final artwork surface, layer by layer. All of Perez’s works, whether uniques or editions, prints or paintings, are layered, painterly and atmospheric. He portrays the most geometric and austere of buildings with the same warmth and admiration with which he depicts nudes, for as he himself explains “the paintings of buildings are portraits, too”.
The world’s finest public institutions, such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney and the British Museum, include works be Enoc Perez in their permanent collections. The artist lives and works in New York, and exhibits his works internationally on a regular basis.
