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Lot Essay
The goal was to make a figurative painting that would make sense in the context of New York and its history, and the continuum of that history.
—Enoc Perez1
Enoc Perez arrived in New York City in 1986 to attend art school and, like hundreds of eager artists before him, to make a mark on the New York art scene. The son of a prominent art critic in Puerto Rico, Perez grew up amid some of the island’s most noted artists and intellectuals thoroughly immersed in the traditions and mythos of modernism. And while his arrival in New York coincided with a period in which the very legacy of painting (and of modernism) was increasingly being scrutinized, Perez was determined to devise an approach to painting that would be worthy of his twentieth-century predecessors while crafting a uniquely distinctive practice rooted in the concept of mark making. Indeed critical to this process was the conflation of painting and printmaking, no doubt a nod to his native Puerto Rico’s formidable printmaking tradition, but also consistent with Perez’s fascination with the work of pop art icon Andy Warhol. For Perez, Warhol represents the ultimate achievement in painting. By foregoing the use of paintbrushes and in its stead photo-silk-screening photographic images onto his canvases, Warhol forever transformed the process of painting. Anxious to follow in these footsteps, Perez set out to find his own method of transferring photo-based imagery onto his canvases.
Executed in 1991, Untitled (Audience) dates from this period of immense creative experimentation and represents one of Perez’s earliest responses to the challenge he had formulated for himself. The results are thoroughly Warholian while presaging his later works, such as his portraits of women, the still lifes of Bacardi Rum bottles and half-empty cocktail glasses, and the iconic modernist hotels and other architectural landmarks that have become the hallmark of his production. Based on an archival photograph documenting a 1961 state dinner at the White House hosted by President John F. Kennedy for Puerto Rico’s then governor Luis Muñoz Marín, featuring both heads of state and their respective first ladies, Jacqueline Kennedy and Dña. Inés Mendoza, the image effectively injects an element of cultural and temporal specificity while firmly placing Perez’s practice within the historical continuum of painting that had prompted his move from the island to the New York metropolis. Unlike Warhol who silkscreened his images onto the canvas, Perez has never fully abandoned the traditional concept of painting but rather devised a technique that merges both practices. His process often consists of using a found photograph or vintage postcard that he enlarges and projects onto his canvas. He then traces the image on a large sheet of paper laid on the canvas. Paint is applied to the verso of the sheet, and rubbed onto the surface of the canvas. In subsequent works this process would involve as many as twenty layers of color mimicking the mechanical effects of a color Xerox. However in the present work, Perez employed a single layer of purple/blue paint the effects of which suggests a carbon copy image complete with its grainy and smudged finishes that imbue the resulting image with a sense of nostalgia and longing. Here as elsewhere the spectral images in Perez’s paintings possess a “provisional” quality, not fully focused, yet somehow permanently etched onto our collective consciousness. Indeed much like his paintings of 1950s and '60s landmark luxury hotels in the Caribbean embody a bygone era rooted in a utopian philosophy, this haunting image of JFK and Muñoz Marín deftly captures the hopes and aspirations implicit in that very cultural moment as Puerto Rico entered the modern era catapulted by a period of intense economic and industrial development of which the tourism industry would become one of its most enduring legacies. Equally intriguing is the reference to “Jackie Kennedy” seated to the right of the Governor—undoubtedly a nod to Warhol’s own countless portraits of the beguiling First Lady. The repetitive use of a detail of Jackie’s image along the lower left edge likewise recall the pop master’s use of serial imagery and further infuses Perez’s painting with a decidedly Warholian aura. Painted just a few years after his arrival in New York, Untitled (Audience) not only bears the conceptual seeds of Perez’s later works, but boldly succeeds in positioning his work within the discourse of painting informed by its past yet firmly invested in its future.
1 See “Bob Colacello Interviews Enoc Perez” in exhibition catalogue Enoc Perez: The Good Days (New York: Acquavella Galleries, 2013), 74.
—Enoc Perez1
Enoc Perez arrived in New York City in 1986 to attend art school and, like hundreds of eager artists before him, to make a mark on the New York art scene. The son of a prominent art critic in Puerto Rico, Perez grew up amid some of the island’s most noted artists and intellectuals thoroughly immersed in the traditions and mythos of modernism. And while his arrival in New York coincided with a period in which the very legacy of painting (and of modernism) was increasingly being scrutinized, Perez was determined to devise an approach to painting that would be worthy of his twentieth-century predecessors while crafting a uniquely distinctive practice rooted in the concept of mark making. Indeed critical to this process was the conflation of painting and printmaking, no doubt a nod to his native Puerto Rico’s formidable printmaking tradition, but also consistent with Perez’s fascination with the work of pop art icon Andy Warhol. For Perez, Warhol represents the ultimate achievement in painting. By foregoing the use of paintbrushes and in its stead photo-silk-screening photographic images onto his canvases, Warhol forever transformed the process of painting. Anxious to follow in these footsteps, Perez set out to find his own method of transferring photo-based imagery onto his canvases.
Executed in 1991, Untitled (Audience) dates from this period of immense creative experimentation and represents one of Perez’s earliest responses to the challenge he had formulated for himself. The results are thoroughly Warholian while presaging his later works, such as his portraits of women, the still lifes of Bacardi Rum bottles and half-empty cocktail glasses, and the iconic modernist hotels and other architectural landmarks that have become the hallmark of his production. Based on an archival photograph documenting a 1961 state dinner at the White House hosted by President John F. Kennedy for Puerto Rico’s then governor Luis Muñoz Marín, featuring both heads of state and their respective first ladies, Jacqueline Kennedy and Dña. Inés Mendoza, the image effectively injects an element of cultural and temporal specificity while firmly placing Perez’s practice within the historical continuum of painting that had prompted his move from the island to the New York metropolis. Unlike Warhol who silkscreened his images onto the canvas, Perez has never fully abandoned the traditional concept of painting but rather devised a technique that merges both practices. His process often consists of using a found photograph or vintage postcard that he enlarges and projects onto his canvas. He then traces the image on a large sheet of paper laid on the canvas. Paint is applied to the verso of the sheet, and rubbed onto the surface of the canvas. In subsequent works this process would involve as many as twenty layers of color mimicking the mechanical effects of a color Xerox. However in the present work, Perez employed a single layer of purple/blue paint the effects of which suggests a carbon copy image complete with its grainy and smudged finishes that imbue the resulting image with a sense of nostalgia and longing. Here as elsewhere the spectral images in Perez’s paintings possess a “provisional” quality, not fully focused, yet somehow permanently etched onto our collective consciousness. Indeed much like his paintings of 1950s and '60s landmark luxury hotels in the Caribbean embody a bygone era rooted in a utopian philosophy, this haunting image of JFK and Muñoz Marín deftly captures the hopes and aspirations implicit in that very cultural moment as Puerto Rico entered the modern era catapulted by a period of intense economic and industrial development of which the tourism industry would become one of its most enduring legacies. Equally intriguing is the reference to “Jackie Kennedy” seated to the right of the Governor—undoubtedly a nod to Warhol’s own countless portraits of the beguiling First Lady. The repetitive use of a detail of Jackie’s image along the lower left edge likewise recall the pop master’s use of serial imagery and further infuses Perez’s painting with a decidedly Warholian aura. Painted just a few years after his arrival in New York, Untitled (Audience) not only bears the conceptual seeds of Perez’s later works, but boldly succeeds in positioning his work within the discourse of painting informed by its past yet firmly invested in its future.
1 See “Bob Colacello Interviews Enoc Perez” in exhibition catalogue Enoc Perez: The Good Days (New York: Acquavella Galleries, 2013), 74.