ARTES PLAmCAS
his methods, using the lessons lie has learned, through experience, about bow to use color ana scale to achieve t1esired effects and generate a specific mood. His recent paintings on paper are aggressive, altJiougb not¡ necessarily angry. The starting point for his new direation is an ink irawing he made of a vase in the home of collectors Peter Brant and Stephanie Seymour. He baa been invited to their home to paint a portrait of Stephanie Seymour. Before taking the pHotographs of bert for the painting, be tested his camera by focusing on a ceramic vase in the room. When he saw the b:st photograph of tile vase in his stuffio, lle felt tliat be had takon sometliing from their home and proceeded to make an ink drawing of the vase from liis photo. The black ink lie was using dripped on the drawing. ~ ther than discard the drawing, be transformed the serendipitous splatter into a ftower pattern on the vase. Tbe ftowers look as tl:iougb they are independent of the vase's surface. !fo Rerez, the ftowers appear to be leaving the vase, removing its beauty. 'Fhis fragile, transitory moment is the most IUI1T8tive element Perez bas ever incluaed in his paintings. Perez started to make a painting on paper from the ink drawing of the vase by nibtling tile original drawing, directly on another. sheet of paper. The resulting painting on ptper is a mirror image of the vase drawing, here painted with black lines on a silver field that is equally distributed on the vase and the surrounding area. When Rerez tiansferred the ink drawing to this painting, a crack he bad drawn in the original seemed to transform itself into what looked like a building on fire in tlie painting. He found the image both terrifYing ana astonishinr gly beautiful. After executing several paintings of this image, Perez realize() that the vase looked like a funerary urn. The iJna.. ge and die thought>are consistent with all his work, which ultimately deal& with the passing of time and the transitory con<tition of humankind The resort hotels of liis youtti that became
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the subject of his first series ofbuilding paintings have ceen altered or even demolishea over time. Painted as they ap,peared in their prime, they S1aDd for a golden moment that bas vanisheil and will never return. 11lie New York skyscrapers he painted were built before he was born and implieiJ a sense of powar and permanence that was compromised by the terrorist attaclfs on the World Trade Center in 2001. When his father instructed him to look at the old masters as a child, he undefstood that these paintings were made in the distant P@St and yet they persisted into the present. His own paintings became a means to defy deatli. The darkness of the palette implies tlie sense that life is short, but art persists. He lives 6is life and fully experiences each moment as he is conscious that, even as he lives, time is passing him by. As for the future, Perez is cautiously optimistic. Mardi Gras. Oleo sObrc tela (2005) de Bnoc P&u. P.otosnfta por Jiaggiomano
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