INTERVIEW

How did your childhood growing up in Puerto Rico influence your style of painting?
EP: Growing up in Puerto Rico was seminal to my approach to painting. All the painting that I could see in person was either at the Museo de Arte de Ponce, a wonderful private collection that was the property of Luis A. Ferré, former governor of Puerto Rico. The collection is housed in a building designed by architect Edward Durell Stone. I still love that building. Also at the Museo de la Universidad de Puerto Rico, designed by architect Henry Klumb, where I spent lots of time since my parents were teachers at the university. And more importantly at artists' studios, my father’s friends. So it is all a mix of European painting, Taino artifacts, and great printmakers. I had the privilege of being taught drawing and painting privately by some of my dad’s friends--Tony Maldonado, Jorge Rechany and Susana Herrero. In 1974 I went to NY with my dad to see Guernica, before Tony Shafrazi got to it. On the same trip, I also meet Papo Colo, whose presence made an impression on me. Growing up in Puerto Rico is like being in a blender. You have a strong culture in the island but it is vital to look outside the island.

Your father was an art critic; in your early days of painting, did the concept of art being critiqued by an outsider factor into what you were creating, or did you create consciously ignoring this notion? 
EP: Criticism wasn’t a concept that I fully understood as a young boy. I did understand wanting to please my Dad, in a way I tried until he passed this year. I had the opportunity to do a retrospective of my work in Puerto Rico; I had been postponing that for years but decided to finally do it. My father was able to come see it, he passed the day that the show closed. He was pleased.

I read a quote about you that said: “Finding himself at odds with the program at Hunter College, where students and faculty criticized his paintings as overly seductive and decorative, Perez maintained his belief in the importance of the aesthetics and pleasure in art”. Can you please go into more detail about this belief, and has your opinion on this changed at all over the years? 
EP: This is something that I will probably never change for me. I make paintings that I hope bring attention to themselves by being undeniable; you may not like them but you can’t say that they are bad either, something that no one else is willing to do, something that method-wise is hard to untangle.

For a painting to be good it’s got to have a relationship to the history of painting, plus it must be real to the maker, among a million other things. My work is real to me and it reflects a lot of the contradictions of myself and many of the lies that I bought into, I know that. A lot of the time they are beautiful and I know that too. I have been critiqued for my subjects being always pleasant, too beautiful, too seductive. A lot of the subjects look pleasant because they are lies that I regurgitate, that I bought into, because lies can be seductive; they are designed to fool you into whatever the person telling the lie wants you to think. Not everything is black and white in the way that I see the world. A lie is by definition ugly, but beautiful images are used to articulate it. Those are my favorite lies, half-truths. Take tourism advertisement—the landscape is beautiful, and that’s undeniable, but chances are that there is a good-looking fashionable couple in it; that may or may not happen in reality. You know this is not going to happen to you, but still it’s beautiful and you want to be there. So much so that this fantasy becomes a part of your very self.

I like to come clean about how I feel, even if it makes me look gullible; I know that I’m not alone. I know that I’ve been had. So I'm at peace with that and painting these illusions makes them mine and that feels good. Specially when as an islander I know the reality, the extreme poverty, the abuses, I understand that these are one-dimensional fantasies with the Island as a backdrop. I like for my work to resist classification. Academia sees a beautiful painting and immediately assumes that you are talented but stupid. On that subject, every time that I see a work that offends me because it is so profoundly bad, I buy it if I can, because I know that Academia will embrace it. And I promise you this approach has worked for me as a collector very well. I love art, it is my life, but I’m under no illusions when it comes to being accepted by the artworld at large. I’m happy to pay the rent, that’s it.

Your work is on display at some of the most prominent art institutions in the world, from the Met and Whitney in NYC to the Museum of Contemporary Art in San Juan, to some of the greatest university collections in America, and you have exhibited in some of the leading gallery spaces from Acquavella to Ben Brown, and in exhibitions in Zurich, Paris, and Brussels. What has been your favorite exhibition you have participated in to date, and is there a permanent collection you would love to be a part of?
EP: The Undiscovered Country, at the Hammer Museum in LA. Curated by Russell Ferguson in 2004. Loved that show. In terms of collections-to-be-in goals, I have none, and if I did, I wouldn’t say it because I would not want to jinx it. 

You are perhaps best known for your paintings and drawings of modernist architecture, as well as beautiful and striking interiors; where did this interest come from?
EP: By the time I turned fifty I realized I had done a lot of paintings on the subject of architecture. I love the subject because it refers to high culture and most of my peers were looking at low culture at the time. I was working on a show for the Dallas Contemporary at the time, a show about Phillip Johnson’s architecture in Texas. So I stopped after that. Closed the studio for a year to figure out if anything was even art. I asked friends for ideas and I got one in particular that I thought was not very good, but a month later I realized that it was indeed the right idea. Peter Brant suggested that I should paint interiors since I had painted so many facades. And he was absolutely right; straightforward ideas are direct and that is good for painting. Also, interiors are to me a mix of architecture, poetry, obsessions, and psychology. They are somebody’s portrait. So I thought of people I admired and went for it. Made 80 paintings.


Which artists have inspired you the most, and what do you collect yourself?
EP: Manet, Velázquez, Picasso, Picabia, Calder, Warhol, JMB, Salle, Schnabel, Prince, Wool…. I collect artists that I admire and that I can trade with. I have an eclectic collection: Hans Bellmer, Picabia, Morandi, Prince, Tavares Strachan, Kilimnik, Salle, Condo, Duncan Hannah; and books.

What are you working on currently that excites you, and what are you most looking forward to seeing and/or being a part of in the art world in the coming new year?
EP: I’m looking forward my show with Ben Brown in London in January. And really looking forward to making a deep dive into the subjects that I have been working on lately.

What is your greatest extravagance?
EP: My greatest extravagances are driving to my studio and wearing Frederick Malle fragrances every day.


What is your most treasured possession?
EP: My phone. It is my office.


When and where were you happiest?
EP: I’m happiest when I am at home with my wife Carole and my children Leo and Luca.

@EnocPerez