NYAB Event - Enoc Perez “Digs”

Enoc Perez “Digs”

Koenig & Clinton

This event has ended.

Koenig & Clinton announces Digs, the gallery’s first solo exhibition of sculptures and paintings by Enoc Perez. On view in the main space is a selection of new cast-iron ‘swizzle stick’ sculptures and paintings that depict Minoru Yamasaki’s World Trade Center. Vivid paintings of vernacular homes in Puerto Rico populate the adjacent space. Together, all works emphasize the operations of history and memory as they relate to the legacies of optimism embodied by 20th century Modernist structures.

Dispersed throughout the floor, a group of Perez’s oxidized iron sculptures are planted atop concrete bases. Inspired by the artist’s personal collection of swizzle sticks from iconic hotels, each elongated work is an assemblage of fragmented drink stirrers from tropical mid-century establishments, such as the Caribe Hilton (San Juan) or the Americana (New York). Approaching sculpture with a painter’s sensibility, Perez initiates his process with 3-dimensional scans of the actual sticks, which he then fractures, collages, forges and casts into a final cobbled form. The sculpture’s namesakes remain visible along the edges, with each hotel’s logo and insignia ossified in relief. Their titles meld colonial and jet-set fantasies while their rusted, mangled forms parallel the varied outcomes of bygone aspirations.

In the same room, juxtaposed paintings pay homage to the Twin Towers. A monumental, bright, and colorful close-up view of the dual monoliths occupies an entire wall while a series of smaller, black, monochromatic paintings form a line nearer to the sculptures. Each painting offers a unique portrait of the World Trade Center buildings that once anchored Lower Manhattan’s skyline, the images of which remain a marker of one of the most tragic events in U.S. history. In an adjacent room, a group of intimately scaled paintings present images of diminutive domiciles in Puerto Rico. The houses featured range between the 19th–21st centuries and include agrarian workers’ huts as well as 20th century pre-fab constructions.

To produce both sets of paintings, Perez employs printmaking techniques to transfer multiple layers of paint from paper onto canvas, burnishing each surface with a small apparatus (such as a pencil) or his hand. The result of this process – misaligned images of buildings that fail to produce a photographic likeness – heightens the psychological impact of the artist’s vocabulary. The viewer is left with a mere impression, the specter of a place or souvenir or symbol, a subjective recollection that remains unresolved.

This exhibition coincides with Perez’s One World Trade Center exhibition at Peter Blum Gallery, New York.

Media

• Painting
• Sculpture

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