Lower East Side Printshop is pleased to announce ENOC PEREZ: MONOPRINTS, on view at the Printshop from September 21 – November 1, 2009. This presentation will feature new unique works on paper created by Enoc Perez, through the Printshop’s Publishing Residency. The Publishing Residency Program invites artists to collaborate with master printers on a new body of work, and projects are fully published by the Printshop.

ENOC PEREZ: MONOPRINTS continues the artist’s investigation of modernist buildings, exploring the ways that form can become a symbol of power, both institutional and aesthetic. Focusing on two landmark buildings, the Pan American Terminal at New York’s John F. Kennedy Airport and Oscar Niemeyer’s Teatro Popular in Niteroi, Brazil, Perez reflects on the utopian ideal of internationalism. More than an architectural rendering, Perez’s prints emphasize the process of building an image with a physical history; the luminous colors and mark making denuding the image of both the building’s privacy and its public iconic significance.

Collaborating with Master Printers Doug Bennett and James Miller, Perez developed the prints gradually, using multiple printed and hand-painted layers to create subtle abraded effects on the surface. Revisiting the same image in multiple studies, Perez explored and manipulated alterations in mood and meaning, abstracting the essence of the image through line and color. The complexity of his process and the textured layers of hand coloring endow his prints with a sensitive quality of romantic nostalgia. Expressionistic and gestural, Perez’s monoprints embody the challenges of painting and a simultaneous liberation from traditional printmaking processes, creating something more akin to a spontaneous form of drawing.

ENOC PEREZ (b. 1967, San Juan, Puerto Rico, lives and works in New York, NY) received his M.F.A. from Hunter College and B.F.A. from Pratt, both in New York. In 2007 he was the focus of a major survey exhibition at MoCA at Goldman Warehouse, Miami. He has exhibited in museums and galleries in the Americas and Europe, including the Centre Pompidou, Paris; The Collezione Maramotti, Reggio Emilia, Italy; the UCLA Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Connecticut; and El Museo del Barrio, New York. He is represented in New York by Mitchell-Innes & Nash.

Enoc Perez’s paintings are featured in a solo exhibition on view at Mitchell-Innes & Nash from September 10 – October 10, 2009.