PETER PERI
Artist
ISSUE 2 2024 AW
Peter Peri is a British artist currently based in London. After graduating from the Masters Fine Art programme at Chelsea College of Arts in 2003, Peri began to build his career through exhibitions at galleries and museums around the world. His recent works employing fine hand-drawn lines trace an austere geometric language that is simultaneously imbued with the warmth of nature. Peri is successful in keeping a perfect balance between these seemingly contradictory elements in his works. We asked about his thoughts behind choosing lines as a means of expression, and what he aims to tell us through them.
Peter Peri has a studio in a building located in Hackney, East London, a home for many artists and creatives. As you step inside, you notice the exposed concrete walls, a space filled with randomly placed rulers in various shapes and sizes and a simple desk with art tools, including spray cans, markers and paint, scattered on its surface. It is exactly what you would expect the workspace of a self-disciplined artist to look like. In the courtyard, there is a wall covered with thick layers of paint sprayed over the years. Worn-out rulers are also piled up in one corner, like a graveyard of tools. Peri appears to be a very gentle and warm person, in contrast to the somewhat inhuman atmosphere of his studio. We started off by asking him about his initial desire to become an artist. As a child, he was surrounded by the “abstract and mysterious works” of his grandfather, who was also an artist. Peri believes that this early encounter fostered in him a competitive spirit towards art. It only seems natural for Peri to have followed his grandfather’s footsteps, but the path to his first exhibition in London was anything but “linear.” “When I was young I was into graffiti,” Peri Says. “What I did was mostly tagging—not beautiful big calligraphy— it was quite destructive and closer to vandalism. I was very involved in it and went to a young people’s prison when I was 17 as punishment.” However, this hardship did not stop his pursuit of art. After being released from the institution, Peri decided to study art seriously at art school. When he graduated in 2003, he officially started his career as an artist.
For his artistic debut, Peri presented a series of black paintings made using the graffiti artist’s tools of markers and spray paint. Peri explains, “They were made through a process of destruction and improvisation, by making marks and spraying over them many times until something appeared out of all the layers of defacement.” However, by 2010, Peri started to lose interest in this improvisational process and searched for different methods to further explore his ideas. He began making paintings composed of fields of closely spaced ruled lines which gradually led to his unique method. Peri comments, “So now things are slower and quieter. I precisely draw lines but I still see them as destructive—destructive of the painting surface. I see each line like a cut in the canvas and I cover the canvas with them completely so the surface becomes kind of shredded.” Although based on such a destructive premise, the accumulation of detailed lines also requires a tremendous level of patience. Peri explains the creative process of a colourful series called “Syntonic Rhythm” produced in 2023 as follows: “I start by choosing approximately ten colours for the lines and dividing the colours into two sets, then I make pairs of different colours from each set. Whenever I come to a diagonal division in the painting, I restart the line in the opposing colour from the pair. The lines follow each other across the painting horizontally and vertically to create unplanned rhythms of colour and form.” As you can tell from this process, it takes Peri a long time to complete a single piece of work. Not only that, he is rarely satisfied with the canvas when it is fully covered with lines. Most of the time he sprays over everything in black and starts the process all over again.
Now you have some idea of the level of patience required in his paintings. The technique he employs for his drawings on paper, made with ultra-fine mechanical pencils and using a magnifying glass, is another form of expression he has continued to explore in parallel with his paintings. “I started making these drawings, in a way, as an exercise to strengthen my patience,” Peri recalls. “As you keep drawing individual lines for hours and hours, your arms become stiff and your eyes sometimes get blurry. But when I was younger, I believed that a process which requires such concentration could train my mind to become a better artist.” That said, what is the intention behind his works made of lines? “In recent paintings I make the straight lines pass through curves which alter the line’s direction and create diversions I can’t predict. It’s like the eccentric growth of a plant and I want the final outcome of the painting to be a surprise, like a natural form is. A plant, an animal, a landscape is always a surprise if we take the time to look.” In addition to his unique technique, Peri’s handcrafted imperfections suffuse his works with an organic essence. The lines, because they are hand drawn, can create unexpected glitches or fades in the surface when they accumulate into a mass. It can be where the ruler he uses is uneven, or where the pen is running out of paint, or where he’s unconsciously pressing harder or softer. These elements are vital to his works, as they add a warmth and intimacy which cannot be expressed through digital creation. Peri says, “The start of each work for me is the individual, a single position, a single line. Different works explore different outcomes with regards to how the lines accumulate into larger structures. Line is something that separates, but at the same it fosters growth over time.” He continues to draw one line after another as if obsessed with them, and expresses the coexistence of conflicting values such as order and chaos, or the organic and inorganic. It may be this paradox that attracts and fascinates the audience.
Lastly, we asked for his thoughts on the theme of this issue—the relationship between obsession and art. “Something I noticed with a lot of ‘Outsider’ artists and examples of art made by the insane is an obsessive use of detail. It feels like a desire to get really inside the works—to make the paper or canvas somehow dissolve through the proliferation of marks. There is an obsessive aspect to that desire which I do feel in my own work.”
Peri made his debut in 2003 at Bloomberg New Contemporaries. He has also shown at Art Now at Tate Britain in April 2007, the Kunsthalle Basel, Switzerland in September 2006, and his work was shown at Tate Britain’s Classified, and the Arts Council Collection’s How to Improve the World: 60 Years of British Art at the Hayward Gallery, London.
PHOTOGRAPHY: Jack Orton
INTERVIEW: Aiko Yanagida
Questionnaire
1
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What do you do?
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I am a visual artist.
2
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Tell us what you love the most about your job.
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The freedom it gives me.
3
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What made you start your current job?
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I realised that I wasn’t going to be happy doing anything else.
4
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Who are the most influential persons in your life?
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I’d say two teachers, one from when I was a child, Harriet Taper and an art teacher, Ewa Gargulinska from when I was a student. Most important my wife Emmanuelle.
5
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Describe yourself in 3 words
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Persistent optimistic inquisitive.
6
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What makes you feel good?
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Communicating
7
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What is the thing that you are very interested in now?
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East Asian landscape painting.
8
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What are three things you cannot live without?
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The usual things.
9
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What do you always have on you?
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Sadly, my phone.
10
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Tell us about your morning routine.
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I usually get up a bit before 7 to prepare breakfast and give our Boxer dog Mischa her morning things. My wife joins me a bit later and we eat together listening to music or the news. For the last year or so I’ve been trying to learn a new line of poetry every morning and if it’s not raining I spend a few minutes starting to memorise that in the garden before getting ready to go to my studio.
11
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What is your favorite drink?
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Wine
12
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What do you get immersed in, losing track of time?
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Writing and drawing and, sadly, my phone.
13
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What is the ultimate luxury for you?
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Getting totally involved in a novel.
14
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When do you feel stimulated or inspired?
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I think inspiration comes from daily work.
15
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What is your favorite color?
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It was definitely blue when I was a child.
16
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What is your favorite taste of food?
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Lately I’ve discovered chouquettes in France, delicious!
17
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What is the most important decision you have made in your life?
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I can’t think what that is.
18
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What was the most moving moment in your life?
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My father’s attitude towards his last months in hospital before his death from pancreatic cancer.
19
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What is the most recent book you have finished reading?
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Something I read before, over 30 years ago, Eugenie Grandet by Balzac.
20
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Who is your favorite author?
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Favourite contemporary author is the Hungarian writer Laszlo Krasznahorkai. I am half Hungarian but I don’t speak the language. However there are translations into English of several of his books by the bilingual poet George Szirtes. For English speakers those are the ones to look for.
21
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What are your three favorite books on the bookshelf?
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The Symbolism of the Cross by René Guénon.
Empty and Full by Francois Cheng
Salammbo by Gustave Flaubert
22
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Where would you like to go for a trip?
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The Palace Museum in Taipei.
23
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Which country would you like to visit in the future?
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Iran
24
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What is the most memorable place you've visited?
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Hagia Sophia Istanbul.
25
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Is there something you've loved doing and keep doing since your childhood?
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Besides drawing I’d say listening to Hip Hop.
26
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What is your favorite recent song?
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22 Theory by Skanks the Rap Martyr
27
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Who’s your favorite singer?
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It would be a rapper - Slick Rick
28
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What is the one song you can listen to all the time?
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Children’s Story by Slick Rick
29
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What are your three favorite movies?
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Le plaisir by Max Ophüls
Damnation by Tarr Béla
Miller’s crossing by Cohen brothers
30
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What are some of your favorite movies you've seen recently?
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Thelma by Joachim Trier
Napoleon by Sir Ridley Scott
MaXXXine by Ti West
Immaculate by Michael Mohan
31
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When you meet someone for the first time, what is the first point that catches your eye?
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It’s always different.
32
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Most memorable smell?
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Damp
33
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What is the best advice you have received from people?
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I like Francis Bacon’s advice to young artists- ‘Know your art history from the Egyptians onwards and don’t be afraid to make a fool of yourself.’
34
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What do you wear in bed?
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Nothing.
35
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What is your motto?
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Keep going.
