View of Emilio Perez’s exhibition “Footprints on the Ceiling,” 2013. Courtesy Galerie Lelong.
“Footprints on the Ceiling,” Emilio Perez’s latest exhibition, achieves something of an epic, almost cinematic effect. Created with layers of vibrant pigment and an X-Acto knife, seveal of the works feature tightly packed clusters of small organic forms and ribbonlike shapes that suggest dramatic, fluid motion. In a visual idiom that relates to graffiti as well as Japanese anime, Perez presents a disorienting, contradictory scene in each of these works. The large-scale abstractions suggest at once an apocalyptic event and a mesmerizing, meditative place.