Emilio Perez
Born 1972, New York. Lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.
“I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand” Confucius
Inspired by his personal history, life experiences and travels, Emilio Perez’s paintings reveal an interest in the natural landscape and a lifelong passion for the sea. By layering memories and fleeting imagery, the artist evokes a visual experience that seduces the viewer via the dynamic forces of nature together with a desire to understand how the narrative unfolds and where it is destined to go. Mediated by an urge to emotionally comprehend himself through “doing”, the artist creates a pictorial impression that is at once nostalgic and hopeful and always in evolution as a vehicle to transport the viewer on a journey of their own imagination. Influenced by the hues and compositions of classical Renaissance paintings, and surrealist unconscious automatism, Perez’s stylistic hybridity plays through in meticulous brushstrokes with elements of abstraction and figuration, recalling mystical landscapes and imaginary worlds.
Perez attended Pratt Institute and University of Florida's New World School of the Arts. Perez's works can be found in the permanent collections of the PAMM - Perez Art Museum, Miami; Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo; Fundación ARCO, Madrid, Matsuri Art Collection, Tokyo and Arkansas Art Center, Little Rock; and in corporate collections, internationally. Public commissions include a permanent mosaic installation for New York City’s Metro Transit Authority and a large scale site-specific video installation for Times Square Arts Midnight Moment. The artist's paintings were featured in the Critical Gestures, PAMM, Miami; 12th Havana Biennial; Topographies at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo; and Signs of the Apocalypse/Rapture at the Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago. Perez had solo exhibitions with Galerie Lelong in both New York and Paris and has been featured in group exhibitions in Dusseldorf, Philadelphia, Miami, Houston and St. Louis, among others.