East, London
Peter Peri
Grafografo
Kinman‘Grafografo’, a solo exhibition by Peter Peri (b.1971, London) takes its title from a short story by the Mexican writer Salvador Elizondo (1932–2006). Drawing on Elizondo’s investigation of the physical and metaphysical qualities of writing through intense self-observation, Peri's new paintings and sculptures set up a sequence of interconnected, multifaceted dialogues between semi-figurative forms and geometric abstraction. Peri’s formal starting-point for these dialogues is one of the most recognizable structures we have come to develop – the grid. Offset, these grids become vehicles to investigate the characteristics of painting and mark-making. Riddled with contradictions and flaws, Peri’s recent black and silver grid paintings undermine their own apparent severity, injecting a playfulness that may be interpreted as a field of ambiguity and enigma. Peri’s steel sculptures feature engineered replicas of the masking tape rolls which are used in the production of his paintings - in the sculptural context they are positioned to allude towards abbreviated figurative forms. Peri’s decision to incorporate such objects furthers his ongoing exploration into temporality and, in extension, with reference to the human body, our own mortality. Peri is interested in the coil, spool or roll as a symbolic representation of a finite time-frame or lifespan. The paradoxical space articulated in the grid paintings contrasts with the simple confrontational nature of his sculptures to manifest elements of a diverse visual language that has as much to do with the nature of intersubjectivity as the metaphysical. In these works, Peri celebrates the principles that constitute contradiction by dismantling them, and constructs informed dialogues that relate to our interpretation of environments, objects and emotions.