BIO

B. 1986. Florida

Victor Perez makes paintings whose images fluctuate between satire and vulnerability while provoking reflection on masculine gender paradigms and power dynamics. Depictions of alienation, shame, domination, and repression are explored through a comically morbid lens. Caricature teeters on the edge of dysmorphia. Slippages occur and the comedy of the cartoon can falter into the discomfort of the real.

Hybridity permeates the work in not only its treatment of subject matter but also in its making. Perez’s drawings in preparation for the paintings undergo a mix of analog and digital processing, evoking the fragmented nature of contemporary experience. He often uses his phone to photograph sketches and then further develops them using a rudimentary painting application and stylus only to then scale them up onto a canvas in the physical world. The resulting paintings' vivid color, hard edges, and evidence of airbrush carry with them traces of having once passed through the digital realm.

Perez earned his MFA from Hunter College in 2021. He lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.