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Exhibition
   
Gustavo Pérez
Recapitulando
March 19-April 23, 2011
click here for exhibition artwork
 

           Opening Reception: Saturday, March 19, 2011, 5:00 to 7:00pm

Recapitulando marks,  for the artist Gustavo Pérez, a summation of his work. The Mexican  ceramist, who has been exhibiting internationally since 1976, has  developed several themes in his ceramic sculpture. This exhibition  provides a retrospective look at those series, and presents over 48  works to the Los Angeles audience. Significant large scale pieces are  included along with Gustavo Pérez's more familiar vessels, resulting in a  complete range of scale and form.

This will be the seventh solo  exhibition of Perez's work at the gallery. Two large scale examples of  his work are included in this show, Triangulo and Tablero. The installation piece Triangulo is  composed of dozens of small cylinders, cut at a precise angle and  placed face-to-face in opposition. The sculpture forms an equilateral  triangle, and though it is based in geometry alludes simultaneously to  minimal art and optical illusion. Tablero is  a wall relief, composed of 49 small abstract forms. Although the  individual pieces are made by straightforward folding and forming of the  clay, the resulting image has a primitive presence.

As he  ventures into the sculptural realm, where the larger vessels have  greater reference to the corporeal or organic, there is a remarkable  ability to control the medium and to work within its physical  properties. He also makes dimensional constructions, a kind of blending  of wall relief sculpture and physical drawing in clay, which explore the  ideas of branching, abstract patterning, and linear progression. Here,  too, Pérez presents clarity of vision, adept execution, and a sense of  grace and natural elegance.

Mexican ceramist Gustavo Pérez makes  vessels that are simple, smooth and symmetrical. Their elegance is  derived from the precision of the incised lines and other graceful  markings on the pots. While using the same clay body--sand colored  stoneware--throughout his work, the artist achieves a wide range of form  and pattern and includes slowly undulating walls beneath the subtly  incised surfaces. The ceramics of Gustavo Pérez are distinguished by  eliminating superfluous details and by synthesis of his elements. Pure  in form and without specific associations, his language of line and the  definition of the vessel mark his work as a distinctive voice. The form  is not just a container or a receptacle; it is architecture. The work is  also a support for drawings, which are at once ancient and modern,  mechanical and lyrical.

Gustavo Pérez was born in Mexico City in  1950, and studied engineering, mathematics and philosophy before he  began his involvement with ceramics. Over the past thirty years, he has  received the honor of two retrospective exhibitions in his native  country. The first retrospective was mounted by the Museum of Modern Art  in Mexico City in 1999. Then, in 2005, Pérez was honored with another  retrospective at the Franz Mayer Museum in Mexico City.

Please click on the image link below to view the digital catalogue for the exhibition: