Artists in the Archive: an Athenaeum and AS220 project
Artists in the Archive from Jori Ketten on Vimeo.
I'm very excited for the upcoming opportunity to install a solo show in the Project Space at Dorsch Gallery (Wynwood Arts District, Miami Florida.) This exhibit, "No End To.", will include a wall installation as well as a continuation of the work that was begun for my recent show in Providence. Please join me if you are in the area!
http://dorschgallery.com/
Thanks to Maya Allison: "In March, 2010, Maya Allison launches a series of projects and curated exhibitions featuring emerging and mid-career artists who push the limits of their individual art-making practices." Check it out: http://maya-allison-projects.com/projects/

New work on view December 3-6, 2009. Aqua Wynwood art fair takes place during the first week of December during the prestigious international art fair Art Basel Miami Beach. The fair is located in a warehouse in the heart of Miami's gallery district, just a few blocks from the Rubell Collection and near other important venues such as the Margulies Collection, the MOCA Goldman Warehouse and many of the largest satellite fairs.
Visit 5 Traverse Gallery from 10.23.09-11.22.09 to see what I've been up to in 2009 in the studio.
May 2007, Installation as part of the exhibition: de/construct 150 Chestnut St, Providence, Rhode Island
When A Thousand Visions Escape:
Theories on the Topology of a Tangible Line (in 16 parts) embodies a maximal minimalist approach, using an economy of means to create an expansive whole. From micro to macro, there is an oscillation from particle to whole and back again. The imagery produced through the forms is abstracted from a wide array of sources as diverse as molecular structure, urban fragments, synthetic structure, and vast landscapes. The intersection of these sources refers to this multi-fragmented, hyper-visual culture we inhabit.
My intention was to use this space as an ‘architectural sketchbook’, giving me the room to experiment with fragments of past and present projects, and is indicative of the expansive nature of my drawing practice. Working with paper in a sculptural manner, I draw images and then cut into, through, and around the marks, freeing the images of their initial bounds. As hybrid drawings, they incorporate a sculptural element insofar as the drawing exists off the page. The drawings are intended to be site-specific, to rely on the architectural surfaces and spaces upon which they are arranged. Layered one upon another or set perpendicular to the wall, this variable placement offers a more complex existence for the marks themselves. As sculptural drawings, they exemplify an expansion of place and allow the viewer to experience the trace, movement, and complexity of the drawn forms.
The Drawing Center NYC, Selections 2007: Levity
Artist statement for How Strange It Is To Be Anything, 2007:
My work evolves from questions that arise in a culture of speed, surface, and endless distractions—a culture that does not easily embrace ambiguity. What do we value and what warrants our attention? What happens when the ubiquitous stuff around us is subtly shifted, or even merely pointed out? An accelerated rate of technological invention and globalization on so many different levels changes our world each and every second. The precise ways in which this affects our ways of seeing and thinking also changes at an exponential rate. Decades ago, Buckminster Fuller aptly described this phenomena as “accelerating acceleration,” a term that has only become all the more relevant.
The sense of wonder I experience at the awkwardness of everything being mixed up with everything—the saturation of visual stimuli—prompts me to highlight the micro moments of things that go unseen. A culture of velocity is a tough place in which to create awareness and focused attention on the little things that compose the greater whole. As a participant in the daily experience of these extremes that we all encounter, my reactions and responses drive me to be expansive with my drawing practice. Using a low-fi approach to materials and methods, determinedly acting against monumentality, I consider my process a sort of maximal minimalism. The work exhibited in Levity takes these ideas as a starting point. It is composed of tiny moments and material representations, like sketches rather than finished drawings. Working with paper, I draw images and then cut into, through, and around what I’ve drawn, freeing the images of their initial bounds. As hybrid drawings, they incorporate a sculptural element insofar as the drawing exists off the page. Layered one upon another or set perpendicular to the wall, for example, the imagery offers a more complex existence for the marks themselves. The drawings are intended to be site-specific, to rely on the architectural surfaces and spaces upon which they are arranged. As sculptural drawings, they exemplify an expansive place and offer the viewer a more interactive sense of the trace, movement, and complexity of the drawn forms. Drawing plays a most important role in my creative endeavors, having always been the most direct means of expressing my responses to this crazy world we inhabit. From traditional forms of mark-making to these recent sculptural drawing series, it is a process that offers infinite possibilities in my research. This research includes a network of ideas and fields that inform my work and fuel my projects, including (but not limited to) various attempts to unify the infinitesimally small with the most vast universal elements (as in certain kinds of physics); architecture; eastern philosophy; and spatial and perspectival issues in an age driven by technology.
WORKS IN LEVITY EXHIBITION: How Strange It Is To Be Anything, 2006
Installation with Paper and PVA adhesive, dimensions variable
The New Yorker, Goings On About Town - April 2, 2007: DRAWING CENTER
35 Wooster St. (212-219-2166)—For “Levity: Selections Spring 2007,” fourteen participants selected from the Drawing Center’s artist registry liberate drawing from gravity, in one sense or another. Lisa Perez’s paper cutouts hover on the walls, like clustering spores; Norma-Jean Bothmer’s vivid blue drawings of her Teddy bear resist solemnity. Light is the “pencil” that creates the images in Bill Gerhard’s geometric works, purple sheets of construction paper strategically exposed to sunlight. Colored pencils are unleashed in Michelle Oosterbaan’s large-scale drawings, which blend abstract elements with carefully rendered trees. Esteban Alvarez’s video of his cat making a “drawing” with string extends the dialogue to include quadrupedal practitioners. Through March 31. (Open Tuesdays through Fridays, 10 to 6, and Saturdays, 11 to 6.)
Lisa Perez
lisaperez00@gmail.com
Solo Exhibitions:
2010 No End To., Dorsch Gallery, Miami FL (April 2010)
2009 still even now, 5 Traverse Gallery, Providence, RI
2002 Room to See, Project Space, Headlands Center for the Arts
Group Exhibitions:
2011 Three, Chazan Gallery at Wheeler, Providence, RI
2011 Among the Breakage: New Painting from Providence, Bell Gallery, Brown University
2011 Artists in the Archive: AS220 Reading Room, Providence, RI
2010 Art for Chile, Providence, RI
2009 Aqua Art Miami (Represented by 5 Traverse Gallery)
2009 deconstruct II, Providence, RI http://deconstruct2.blogspot.com/
2009 One Night Stand, 5 Traverse Gallery, Providence, RI
2007 Selections Spring 2007: Levity, Drawing Center, New York, NY
2007 deconstruct I, 150 Chestnut St, Providence, RI http://150chestnut.blogspot.com/
2007 Future 86 Art in the Catskills, August, 2007, http://future86.blogspot.com/
2006 Night of 1,000 Drawings: A Benefit for Artists Space, New York, NY
2006 RISD Summer Faculty Exhibition; Woods-Gerry Gallery, Providence, RI
2006 Good Neighbors: 70’of Common Ground; Provflux 06, Providence, RI
2005 About Light, Dutchess County Community College, Poughkeepsie NY
2005 Kingston Sculpture Biennial, Kingston NY
2005 SUNY Ulster Art Department Faculty Exhibition, SUNY Plaza, Albany NY
2005 This is Not an Archive, CCS, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY
2004 Closer In, The Contemporary Artists Center, North Adams, MA
2003 D.U.M.B.O. Art Under the Bridge Festival, Open Studios, 68 Jay St., Brooklyn NY
2002 Discreet Object Series, Headlands Center for the Arts Open House
2001 Oversight: installation, Headlands Center for the Arts Open House
2001 Slip: installation, Headlands Center for the Arts Open House
2001 Five Star, UC, Berkeley Art Museum
Projects + Awards:
2005 Viewing Program, Drawing Center, NYC, NY
2002 Project Space, Headlands Center for the Arts, Sausalito, CA
2001-02 Post-MFA Studio Award: Headlands Center for the Arts, Sausalito, CA
Publications + Press:
Gang of four by Greg Cook, The Phoenix, November 3, 2009
Becoming Silhouettes: Lisa Perez
Essay by Eugenio Volpe www.providencedailydose.com, October 23, 2009
Drawing Papers #67, catalog for Selections 2007: Levity, Drawing Center NYC
Kingston Sculpture Biennial Catalog 2005
CAC September 2004, Contemporary Artists Center, North Adams, MA
(Catalog of the "Closer In" exhibition)
Five Star: The 31st Annual University of California, Berkeley
(catalog for the Master of Fine Arts Graduate Exhibition)
New Yorker: Goings on About Town, April 2, 2007Visiting Artist/Lectures:
UC Berkeley Art Museum, Five Star: Artists' Talk, May 12, 2001
Headlands Center for the Arts, Artist Talk: MFA Studio Awardees, May 30, 2002
Education:
MFA University of California, Berkeley
BFA University of Colorado, Boulder

