Perri neri
Perri Neri has always been fascinated by the visceral palpability of the human body. Living, changing, perishable figures are coupled, stretched, fragmented, and expanded. Quick angles and edges against slow curves produce a speed to the eye. “I started using the white line as a way to map out the energy and movement,” Neri explains, “and I can also think of them as rays of light that, instead of reflecting off fleshy surfaces, penetrate and drive through them. I love the idea of that.”
The power of the drawn line and drama of color come together at the boundaries of both classical figuration and modern abstraction in Neri's depiction of the human form. Using a limited palette of luminous red, blue, and yellow, some body parts are painted into focus while others remain drawings. The energy of the bodies, their raw human qualities, are often confrontational in their improvised, non finito appearance. The raw canvas absorbs, consumes the painted marks and traces of line, and holds onto them like a memory.
Perri Neri is an artist and curator currently working in New York City. She is the founder and director of Living Room - NYC, representing the determined and independent artist. Neri is also the founder and creative director of Refrigerator Poetry Visual Art Archive. She is represented by The Painting Center in New York City where she is the President of the Executive Committee.
Neri holds an MFA in Painting from Pratt Institute and has had several solo exhibitions in New York City at The Painting Center and Ceres Gallery. Neri has also been included in several group exhibitions in New York City galleries that included Caelum Gallery, AIR in Brooklyn, and was a featured artist in Rachel Roy Showroom in Manhattan. A retrospective of her work was exhibited at The Morean Center for the Arts in St. Petersburg, Florida (2020). Other exhibitions include the Orlando Museum of Art, Polk Museum of Art, and Tampa Museum of Art. Her curatorial projects include “I Am My Best Work (2020), “New Optics” (2020), “Truth, Beauty, Freedom, Love,” (2021), and “Indivisible Spectrum.” (2022). Neri’s work has been featured in two volumes of Studio Visit Magazine and was featured in Honeysuckle Magazine (2015), Women in Contemporary Art, Where are They Now?
