Exhibition Embassies by Puerto Rican artist Enoc Perez at UTA Artist Space - Los Angeles, CA

View exhibition Embassies by artist Enoc Perez / photo courtesy UTA Artist Space


UTA Artist Space is pleased to announce a solo exhibition titled Embassies by New York-based artist Enoc Perez,  will present a series of new works that will be on view at the space until June 17, 2017.

For this exhibition, Perez has created a set of architectural paintings that feature the United States Embassy buildings scattered across the world. Born from frustrations with the country’s recent presidential election, the artist seeks to unpack the collective identity that these physical constructs generate (or perhaps impose on citizens). More specifically, Perez questions how the contemporary political landscape has narrowed our relationships with these buildings. His meditation likens them to bunkers–decaying shelters that refute the utopian ideals they seemed to offer in the past.

View exhibition Embassies by artist Enoc Perez / photo courtesy UTA Artist Space

View exhibition Embassies by artist Enoc Perez / photo courtesy UTA Artist Space

In the way that Perez’s previous architectural paintings were filled with a sense of optimism, the Embassy works usher in a certain anxiety. Portraits of such compounds in London, Beijing, Tel Aviv, and Saigon, among others, suggest a larger shift in perspective. Individual identities are both lost and overshadowed by the perversions of political conflict. Outsiders are left with these singular walled beacons that are more suggestive of moral depreciation than the honor and pride of previous generations.

Perez’s paint is layered onto canvases in a manner that reflects that of a blueprint–here viewers are forced to confront the polarizing path that a select group of individuals have devised on behalf of an entire population.

View exhibition Embassies by artist Enoc Perez / photo courtesy UTA Artist Space

ABOUT ENOC PEREZ

Born in San Juan in 1967, Enoc Perez first took painting lessons at the age of eight. As the son of an art critic, he spent family vacations traveling to museums in different countries and learning about the history of art. In 1986, Perez moved to New York to study painting at the Pratt Institute before earning his master’s degree at Hunter College.


Perez’s work can be found in the permanent collection at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; British Museum, London; Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami, Florida; Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven; New York Public Library; RISD Museum of Art; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts; Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; Museum of Contemporary Art, San Juan, Puerto Rico; Zimmerli Art Museum, Rutgers University; The Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, Vassar College; Hammer Museum, University of California, Los Angeles; Williams College Museum of Art; Queens Museum; University Museum of Contemporary Art, University of Massachusetts, Amherst; University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive; Picker Art Gallery, Colgate University; Art, Design, and Architecture Museum, University of California, Santa Barbara; Richmond Center for Visual Arts, Western Michigan University; Vera List Center, New School; and the Chazen Museum of Art, University of Wisconsin.

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