“I refer to these paintings as “mashups” – collages that are painted rather than glued together. They resemble skin more than a simple patchwork. I draw images from tourist brochures, advertisements, science books, Trivago, and photos of tropical landscapes that resonate with me or that I feel a personal connection to. I then use a mobile application, the same one my children use to create digital collages – or what they call “mashups” – to make the images feel more real, more like myself: fractured. I avoid creating the collage directly on the canvas, as I don’t want it to resemble Frankenstein’s monster. Instead, I aim for a more uniform appearance, akin to skin. To me, this approach makes the images feel more realistic in a psychological sense.” - Enoc Perez

Enoc Perez’s Untitled (Fractured) presents a vivid tableau of pink hibiscus flowers that surge toward the viewer, occupying the canvas with an assertive vitality. These blooms, set against a backdrop of verdant leaves, are rendered with the artist’s characteristic grainy texture, evocative of the fading quality of an old Xerox print. This deliberate surface treatment, so emblematic of Perez’s oeuvre, invites a contemplation of memory, temporality, and the reproducibility of images.

Intriguingly, at the uppermost portion of the composition, the viewer encounters fragmented text partially obscured by the luxuriant petals. The word ‘Caribbean’ can be faintly discerned, a poignant nod to Perez’s ongoing exploration of Caribbean identity, tourism, and their entanglement with the region’s colonial history. This allusion is deeply resonant with Perez’s personal narrative, drawing a parallel to his own Puerto Rican heritage and the complex intersections of culture, commerce, and history.

The composition of Untitled (Fractured) is visually arresting, its fragmented structure compelling the viewer to engage with the work on multiple levels. Upon closer examination, the image reveals itself to be a collage-like assembly, segmented into irregular shapes that appear almost haphazardly arranged, as if the original image has been torn apart and meticulously reassembled. This disjointedness speaks to Perez’s artistic process, where he sources images from tourist brochures, advertisements, and various ephemera, subsequently manipulating them digitally before transposing the altered collage onto canvas using his distinctive oil stick technique.

Perez himself has remarked on the intended effect of this approach, likening the final image to ‘skin’ – a metaphor for the experience of fragmentation and wholeness that echoes his lived reality as a Puerto Rican in New York. Despite its fractured appearance, the image achieves a sense of cohesion, denoting the complex and layered experiences of identity, belonging, and cultural memory. Through Untitled (Fractured), Perez not only invites the viewer into a dialogue with the past but also challenges them to consider the ways in which these histories are perpetually reconstructed in the present.