Enoc Pérez was born on November 20, 1967, in San Juan, Puerto Rico. He lives and works in New York. He studied painting at Pratt Institute, then earned a master’s degree from Hunter College. From the outset, he championed a painting of beauty and visual pleasure. Parts of the academic world judged it too seductive, even decorative.

His repertoire is highly consistent: sensual nudes, still lifes, tropical resorts, cars and icons of modernist architecture. He is best known for his paintings of landmark New York buildings. They include the United Nations Headquarters, Lever House and the Seagram Building. He also paints the great modernist hotels of his native city. What fascinates him about these buildings is the utopia from which they emerged. Their architects believed a better world could be built. His paintings thus capture their aura, between memory and desire.

A Singular Technique

For nearly twenty years, Enoc Pérez developed a singular technique. It was inspired by printmaking and Warhol’s silkscreens. For each color, he made a separate preparatory drawing. He coated the back of the sheet with oil paint, then pressed it onto the canvas. The color was then transferred. The brush disappeared: the image was built up in successive layers. Its vibrant, slightly irregular texture gave his buildings an almost ghostly presence.

In 2010, he broke with this process and returned to the brush. “Sometimes you have to burn your own house in order to create something new,” he explains. His painting then gained in freedom, bright color and gesture. Yet it remained attached to the forms of modernity. He also works in oilstick drawing, which extends this renewed energy.

A Recognized Body of Work

His work has been exhibited in New York, notably at Acquavella Galleries and Mitchell-Innes & Nash. It has also been shown in Paris, Berlin, London and Milan. Institutions have presented it, such as the Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami and the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. It is held in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Corcoran. The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts also holds his work.

Between nostalgia and hedonism, Enoc Pérez’s work sets modernist ideals against tropical paradise. Architecture meets the body, and the rigor of the grid meets the sensuality of color. For this Puerto Rican-born artist, it is also a way of questioning the image America has built of the Caribbean.

Enoc Pérez in Paris

Galerie 75 Faubourg has devoted two solo exhibitions to him in Paris. In 2021, it presented recent paintings and drawings of interiors, portraits and automobiles. Under the Palm Trees followed in 2023.