​DOCUMENTARY

          Statement

 

The sculptural works of Rafael Perez possess a rarefied and surreal dimension. There is a sort of peace at the heart of his artworks that gives them a certain fractured ineffability, a kind of desolate success to the finished product. A constant in his work is the silent torment that one grasps from past experience. Perez himself states that ‘…the true artist helps the world by giving something to the spectator – not something material, but an idea, an eye-opening experience, an inspiration.’ He is also concerned with portraying a sense of the common feelings and situations that we all go through in our lives, feelings that change and move us. For Perez these sentiments are only fully expressed through the human form, in the sense that few things speak to us as much as the body does; it is a matter of who we are, what we are and how we read and interpret ourselves. In the past fragmentation and a sense of the unfinished has been an important aspect of his practice, insofar as this is able to carry the beauty of the whole and transmit more than the completed piece of art. In a similar way we often get much more from the immobile body, poised in its very own speechless expressibility, than we do from speaking to someone. In more recent work Perez has been focusing on the sense of movement that comes with inhabiting a body. It is one of those things that will forever remain constant. We move and the world moves around us, it cannot be stopped. On the other hand, a feeling will not last forever and an emotion is nothing but temporary. It is this seeming contradiction at the heart of being a living body that Perez is currently attempting to explore, the incommensurability between the constant and transitory, the corporeal and the emotional.

 

Exhibitions / Events:

 

2015 -"The Signature Art Prize: Winners", Degreeart                   Gallery, London


2015 -"The Signature Art Prize", Bethnal Green, London

2014 - "The Way It Felt", Nornam Rea Gallery, York.

2014 - "Free For Arts Festival", Federation House,                      Manchester
 

2014 - "Noise Festival", Manchester
 

 

2014 - "Buy Arts Fair '14", Old Granada Studios,                        Manchester

 

2014 - "Verve Open 2014: Sculpture", Loud and                           Western, Fulham, London

 

2014  - “Show & Tell" Artist talk, Cornerhouse,                             Manchester.

 

2014  - “Find what You Love and let it Kill You",                           Federation House, Manchester.

2014 - “ Repetition is Part of Who We Are”, The Eighth                 Day, Manchester

 

2013  - “Experience Needed” 4 Piccadilly Place,                           Manchester

2013 - “Media City Graduate Show”, Salford                                 Quays. Salford. 

 

2013 - Open Studio Exhibition. Allerton Studios,                         Salford

 

2013 - “Metanoia, The Espy Experience”, 4 Piccadilly                  Place, Manchester

2013 - “ Bubble Collection”, The Eighth Day,                               Manchester 



2012 -  “Ur performance; White”, Islington Mill, James                  Street, Salford



2012 - “Free for All”, Free For Arts Festival, 4 Piccadilly               Place, Manchester



2012 - “Unweaving Reality”, Fred Aldous, 37 Lever                      Street, Manchester



2012 - “Ur performance; Moon”, Islington Mill, James                  Street, Salford



 

2011 - “Salford New Blood”, The Triangle art gallery,                    Manchester 



2010 - “We Fought the Law”, Allerton Studios, Salford,