DJ Perera
DJ Perera, Untitled, black on black, 2012
Artist Statement
To reconstruct the deconstructive language that pervasively defines the function of postmodern art becomes an inadvertent concept through my visceral abstractions. To reassert the relevancy between formal components with relation to colour, line, form, and space provides the impetus to create an iconography that becomes its own culture. To develop a uniformed aesthetic that forgoes all subjective representation becomes quintessential through a “less is more” directive. My black on black series showcases a procedural aesthetic that challenges the traditions of representational painting and drawing. It is a process that subliminally reconstructs personal and cultural experiences thus creating a visual context in which the artist becomes both the creator and spectator. The level of reflectivity, tactility, viscosity, and monochromatic depth, are all by-products as their invariable characteristics grant each painting it's own unique iconography. While black remains constant, it is elegance personified.
-- DJ Perera, 2013
DJ Perera is a Sri Lankan artist returning to Fort Worth, Texas from Brooklyn, New York. In 2012 DJ graduated with his MFA in Painting with summa cum laude honours and honorary distinction from Pratt Institute, and received his BFA with cum laude honours from Texas Christian University in 2010. Born and raised in the scorching temperatures of the Arabian Gulf in Doha, Qatar, DJ pursued art very early in his formative years and was even selected as his secondary school's ambassador for the arts. In 2006 he finally arrived in the United States of America to further expand his creative talent under the purview of James Woodson and Ross Neher.
Before graduating from TCU, DJ held his first solo-exhibition at Ro2 Art and since then, his works have been proudly collected by many including most notably, H.E. Dr. Palitha Kohona, Sri Lankan Ambassador to the United Nations in New York.
Marking his return to Texas, DJ will be exhibiting a new series of paintings completed during his two-year study in New York. His series entitled black on black, exhibits a spectacular abandonment of DJ's earlier ephemerally psychedelic style, yet his works still elegantly possess the same vivid intensity but with a higher grade of sophistication.
