Feb 08 – Mar 31, Massy Arts will host a new window installation by Ecuadorian visual artist Esteban Pérez.

In the series of paintings entitled “Unfinished Marks”, the artist was inspired by walking practices that seeked, through the body, to learn about this place called Vancouver in its colonial statement. In the streets and built environment of the Downtown Eastside, Pérez found a range of unplanned marks, spills, graffiti, dirt, and other manifestations of the urban landscape.

“For me, this hidden language makes visible the movements and social interactions that happen in the city and from where I was trying to learn the social codes of this place. At the same time, I found these marks surprisingly similar to the aesthetic of the Latin American urban landscape, namely my home of Quito, Ecuador. Usually, the aesthetic of the periphery is rejected by the western paradigms of beauty. However, I think that these places and their unplanned surfaces are filled with charm and truthfulness.”, he says.

As a window show, Unfinished Marks proposes to break with conventional hierarchies or those imposed by dominant western ideologies in order to see every aesthetic, unfinished or otherwise, as valid.

The Massy Arts Gallery is located at 23 East Pender Street in Chinatown, Vancouver.

The gallery is open Tuesday to Saturday, 12pm to 5pm.

Entrance is free, and masks are mandatory.

To contact the gallery, send an email to: info@massyarts.com.

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The Process

“Much about painting is the process and with it a focus on materiality and colour. Recently my painting practice has evolved alongside and as an extension of my investigations into unfinished aesthetics. By not working from preliminary sketches, this approach highlights non-mastery and a decolonizing sensibility. This involves downloading personal energy onto the surface and generating an image through improvisation.” – Esteban Pérez

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The Artist

Esteban Pérez (b. 1992 in Quito, Ecuador) graduated from Emily Carr University of Arts + Design with an MFA degree in 2021. His work has been part of exhibitions such as: ‘Radical Reworlding’ (AHVA Gallery UBC, 2021), ‘Triplete’ (No Lugar, 2018), and Premio Brasil (Centro de Arte Contemporáneo, 2017), and in 2019 he had his first solo show Transitory (Más Arte, 2019). In 2020, he was the recipient of The Audain Travel Award in Vancouver.

In the same year, he won the 2nd Place Award in RAW, an MFA online exhibition, organized by the University of Montana, USA. He was selected for the Premio Brasil–Arte Emergente (CAC), an award funded by the Brazilian embassy in Quito for the promotion of Emerging Artist.

Click here to visit the artist’s website

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