Jorge Peris
Jorge Peris: Desembarco en el País de Nunca Jamás
Installation View
Nicodim Gallery, Los Angeles, 2021
Jorge Peris: Desembarco en el País de Nunca Jamás
Installation View
Nicodim Gallery, Los Angeles, 2021
Jorge Peris: Desembarco en el País de Nunca Jamás
Installation View
Nicodim Gallery, Los Angeles, 2021
Jorge Peris: Desembarco en el País de Nunca Jamás
Installation View
Nicodim Gallery, Los Angeles, 2021
Jorge Peris: Desembarco en el País de Nunca Jamás
Installation View
Nicodim Gallery, Los Angeles, 2021
Jorge Peris: Desembarco en el País de Nunca Jamás
Installation View
Nicodim Gallery, Los Angeles, 2021
Jorge Peris: Desembarco en el País de Nunca Jamás
Installation View
Nicodim Gallery, Los Angeles, 2021
Jorge Peris: Desembarco en el País de Nunca Jamás
Installation View
Nicodim Gallery, Los Angeles, 2021
Jorge Peris: Desembarco en el País de Nunca Jamás
Installation View
Nicodim Gallery, Los Angeles, 2021
Jorge Peris: Desembarco en el País de Nunca Jamás
Installation View
Nicodim Gallery, Los Angeles, 2021
Jorge Peris: Desembarco en el País de Nunca Jamás
Installation View
Nicodim Gallery, Los Angeles, 2021
Jorge Peris: Desembarco en el País de Nunca Jamás
Installation View
Nicodim Gallery, Los Angeles, 2021
Jorge Peris: Desembarco en el País de Nunca Jamás
Installation View
Nicodim Gallery, Los Angeles, 2021
Jorge Peris: Desembarco en el País de Nunca Jamás
Installation View
Nicodim Gallery, Los Angeles, 2021
Jorge Peris: Desembarco en el País de Nunca Jamás
Installation View
Nicodim Gallery, Los Angeles, 2021
Jorge Peris: Desembarco en el País de Nunca Jamás
Installation View
Nicodim Gallery, Los Angeles, 2021
Jorge Peris: Desembarco en el País de Nunca Jamás
Installation View
Nicodim Gallery, Los Angeles, 2021
Jorge Peris: Desembarco en el País de Nunca Jamás
Installation View
Nicodim Gallery, Los Angeles, 2021
Jorge Peris: Desembarco en el País de Nunca Jamás
Installation View
Nicodim Gallery, Los Angeles, 2021
Jorge Peris: Desembarco en el País de Nunca Jamás
Installation View
Nicodim Gallery, Los Angeles, 2021
Jorge Peris: Desembarco en el País de Nunca Jamás
Installation View
Nicodim Gallery, Los Angeles, 2021
Jorge Peris: Desembarco en el País de Nunca Jamás
Installation View
Nicodim Gallery, Los Angeles, 2021
Jorge Peris: Desembarco en el País de Nunca Jamás
Installation View
Nicodim Gallery, Los Angeles, 2021
Jorge Peris: Desembarco en el País de Nunca Jamás
Installation View
Nicodim Gallery, Los Angeles, 2021
Jorge Peris: Desembarco en el País de Nunca Jamás
Installation View
Nicodim Gallery, Los Angeles, 2021
Jorge Peris’ practice is a collaboration between the buildings and spaces that will eventually house his work, his own body, and the many characters that populate the inside of his head. For his first solo exhibition with Nicodim, he transforms the gallery into a fantasy world in which all these figures have escaped: the columns within the high-ceilinged space remind Peris of the Parthenon, so he created a Trojan Horse. It centerpieces the installation, and serves as a vehicle to transport the sometimes dark, but often playful voices from inside himself into tangible reality, to gift them their own Neverland.
The chaos is immediate. An organ teters on the edge of a table, and recalls the classic piano-falls-from-the-sky cartoon trope from when liability laws were the exception, not the rule. A dresser defies gravity and balances on three legs while merging with another, larger dresser. Together, they resemble Tinkerbell about to take flight, or conversely, the downfall of scientist Seth Brundle in David Cronenberg’s The Fly. The limbs of a tree link together and extend through the walking routes, either reaching for an embrace or to bludgeon the viewer.
Peris’ forms embody an entropic architecture. The large-scale works are composed of found wooden modernist furniture and musical instruments. Each object is roughly the size of the artist. He sees them as avatars for himself—their bones are his bones, their insides are his guts. Drawing more from Baroque Spanish sculpture than Gordon Matta-Clark, he carves, slices, and subtracts the pieces past the point of functionality and grafts them onto and into one another until they inhabit a technicolored spectrum between balance and precarity. He follows the lines and veins in the wood of the original objects, tracing his own body into the context of human history, finding music and humor within the cycle of decay and rebirth.
Jorge Peris (born Alzira, Valencia, 1969) lives and works in El Palmar, Valencia, and Bucharest, Romania. Recent exhibitions include Michiel Ceulers and Jorge Peris: Endangered Species, Galeria Nicodim, Bucharest (2020); Dark Man a lomos del Pájaro de Fuego, IVAM Instituto Valenciàno d’Arte Moderna, Valencia (2020, solo); Adam’s Resurrection, Sandwich Gallery, Bucharest, Romania (2019, solo); Al norte de la tormenta, MAXXI Museum, Rome, Italy (2019); Our Lady of the Flowers, Galeria Nicodim, Bucharest (2018); The Hierophant, Galeria Nicodim, Bucharest (2017); Olmo 2017, Luis Adelantado, Valencia, Spain (2017, solo); Portal del angel, Cantina Antinori, San Casciano Val di Pesa, Tuscany, Italy (2016, solo); Dolmen, Sinfonia nr. 7, Magazzino D’Arte Moderna, Rome, Italy (2015, solo); Tamaris, Chateau de Montbeliard, France (2012, solo); Micro, Aureo, Adela, MACRO, Rome, Italy (2010, solo).
At Nicodim LA, Jorge Peris’s “Desembarco en el País de Nunca Jamás” (Landing in Neverland) delivered peculiarities expected of an exhibition titled after Peter Pan’s island, sans sentimentality. Peris’s sculptural distortions of furniture and musical instruments, all of which seemed ready to spin out of control, captured the existential heartbreak encountered not in the nursery but at an estate sale. And what is that event but an epilogue to being all grown up?
At Nicodim gallery, wooden sculptures overtake the space. Many are made from found tables, dressers, pianos, and armoires that Jorge Peris hodge-podges together into strange assemblages that defy gravity. This body of sculptures feels both historical and refreshing, as Peris breathes new life into found objects, imbuing them with purpose, levity, and poise.