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IRIS PEREZ Iris Perez is an unknown name in our small European environment where the taste of his contemporaries is measured by the glamour of the artist, whose delight is to recognize ones own prestige by associating oneself with the name rather with the work. To attend a vernissage and acquire a sculpture or a painting for one's apartment means simultaneously to acquire a part of the artist’s halo. And everything remains recognizable, nearly intimate... Consequently, the same happens to the circle of our cognitions. This is why this little and private breakthrough of the Marisall Gallery should conditionally be marked as a confrontation with conformism. It is timed nearly exactly because the new century, which is turning to new generations, establishes new practices and needs, preferring the taste and knowledge to fashion, counting on the globalization of art. In this new framework of the perception of modern art, completely new projections of sensibility emerge. The revitalization of the „message“is in line with the new meaning of art. Iris Perez from the Dominican Republic has made her own decision of several ways in which to see the relationship between the picture and everyday life, to take nearly classical form of the picture in which she speaks with a sign and a color,. The sign is the same as a word: in order to achieve its aim, it has to be stripped of its historical artistic meaning. What really matters for the artist is the selected theme of human drama of those from the social margin. Her series of pictures presents a kind of spiritual and visual diary. Remembering the fact that the universally guaranteed human rights are those of a child to a happy childhood and those of an adult to make a living, it is obvious that Iris Perez did not have to have to go far to find themes for her paintings. The life space of the artist and life space of the painting have become identified. In the social picture of Santo Domingo and the whole of Latin America Iris Perez is trying to highlight the problem of exploiting women from an early childhood. These are the outstanding social problems which, besides being reflected on children, not infrequently present the children as victims of cheap labor and exploitation. The Zagreb exhibition shows works from seven cycles, whose unique theme is presented in different stylistic and iconographic ways. Each given surface reveals expressive strength and well balanced composition. It is interesting that the artist finds a new solution for each experience. Her sensibility is sublimed in the set. The protagonists of the social and alternative life scene are set in coffered spaces of loneliness and disorientation. The pictures are framed like documentary film. Giving the impression of being both discreet and existential at the same time, these sequences of a social landscape are free from any pathetic ad superficial decoration which could imperil the picture of the drama with a grotesqueness. After adopting the picture for some time, it stops being a space of illustration and turns into a work of art. It tries to denote a measure for the existential right. Created in a combined technique where wood, sheet, metal, paint, paper complement each other, the artist also breaks and parallely builds the difference. She emphasizes the reveres of the life reality. The colours are dark in harmony with the other side of life, they shun decorativeness in favor of expressiveness. By her exceptional measure not to distort, Iris Perez expresses the fears and desires of a person with stressed humanity. The composition and the conceptual severity of a picture conceal the artist’s sensibility for a chosen theme. But this is a fine relationship; such an approach requires at the same time both a distance and an intimacy. Marina Baričević
Marina BARIČEVIĆ |
