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Exhibitions
- Kiko Pérez
Makulatur
28/05/2015 - 18/06/2015
From studio to exhibition the work of the artist moulds itself to the formal and methodological norms underpinning exhibitional hegemony. The manifest servility of that which makes itself visible based exclusively on the standardised norms of what we now call contemporary art, is called into question here, in this solo exhibition by Kiko Pérez, the second one to be hosted by the Heinrich Ehrhardt Gallery. The verisimilitude and authenticity with which the work develops in the gallery in the same way that it does so in the studio constructs a series of related and contrasting rationales, which are marginal when it comes to passing judgement on the visual arts. For years now Kiko Pérez has been charting a course where everything is on show. He hides practically nothing. Error and accident encounter precision and nuance. Chance is turned into method and what is routine and known disappears. The dificulty involved in demonstrating, in the context of an artistic space, a work free of the conditions that belong to a regulated system, to that cliché of the exhibition itself, means transporting one’s own studio, the freedom with which one works there, to the hierarchized space of the gallery. That rupture, that fragmentation and decontexualization of the place generates a real rawness in which the entire technical and artisanal development of the work of Kiko Pérez, along with the dynamics of the construction of forms and colours, acquire an authentic, real-life dimension, which disqualify and suppress the exhibitional space itself in favour of a subversion of form, style and category. The work of Kiko Pérez causes the disappearance of categorized conception. In response to the invalidity of style, there are no longer any forms related to identity, the category and analysis of the work of art which are carried out from it become interrupted due to a disconnection of established logics. Textures, lines, reflections and order are presented as dismantled and working on the fringe of the conceptual apparatus out of which everything evolves.
In Makulatur, Kiko Pérez has focussed on work on paper, but not so much as a prior presupposition as a condition which is not preceded by decision. Now, in truth, the artist appears to have decided and to have chosen little and, although in reality the opposite may have occurred, the sensation is just that. Behind a patina of immediacy, a profound reflective burden resides in his work; the decision is the work itself, the contrast and fabric which, line by line, collage after collage, and sheet of paper after sheet of paper, establishes a disorder of norms, modes and categories. As such, the internal system of each piece is transferred to the general structure of the exhibition; the internal behaviour of the elements that make up a particular work extend and recreate that very formula in the exhibitional display.
And while certain questions that appeared basic in his earlier work, which showed no signs of disappearing, are now hard to nd, there are others, which were not visible before and have become prominent when observing the work. Although paper is now his benchmark, wood and the rest of the materials with which the artist has rehearsed, have left their mark, and like that verisimilar process from the study to the gallery, those materials we do not see today, linger on.
Superimposed sheets of paper which once again display the in nite possibilities of the juxtaposition of various pieces, geometrical collaged forms, organic painting, splashes of colour and sequences open up a truly boundless spectrum of work. There is no longer any format, no prior idea, what you see is both previous and subsequent; a belligerent and continuous present which breaks the dynamic of time in the exhibition and in the gaze. Icons, symbols, adoration, the profane and the sacred weaving an enigmatic pattern which leads to a central idea in the work of Pérez: mystery. That very thing that brings us close to a real experience with the material and with the artistic experience itself. There is something primitive and suprematist; an urge which goes back to the origin of things. A journey where everything is yet to happen.