Pat Perry

Used objects for sale, at-home firework displays, and moments of midwestern American life form the scenes depicted by Detroit-based artist Pat Perry in Which World, his second solo show at Hashimoto Contemporary. Culling images from memory and crowd-sourced archives like Craigslist or YouTube, Perry’s visual anthology prompts us to consider which world we choose to live in based on which images we acknowledge and which we ignore. Red and yellow life jackets stacked against a white garage door in the high afternoon sun; a pink explosion on suburban asphalt after sundown; a fast food gas station sign as the light at the end of the tunnel. These new paintings highlight understated quotidian moments, refracting ordinary details into uncanny or magical subjects.

Perry’s Craiglist series features clusters of ritualistic objects made kitschy or eerie through their earnest portrayal: scenes of religious lawn ornaments in the yellowing grass; a cemetery with two grave plots for sale, marked by floating neon green squares. His renderings of amateur firework spectacles show warm-toned blazes on concrete sidewalks or in front of picturesque family houses. The images are imperfect: their subjects are cropped, and the angles are askew. But for Perry, their brevity and functionality offer moments of humanity. There is no posturing or grandstanding in these fleeting images; their originators’ actions are honest, earnestly depicting how life actually is.

Scenes from every day in middle America punctuate these digital images of life, imbuing conventions of “ordinary” with peculiar or otherworldly sights. Two identical houses with gable roofs sit sedentary in the snow, miniaturizing a teenage girl preparing to hang a blue banner and her younger brother kneeling towards her, a crossbow in hand from earlier activities. Or, outside a brick red church, three Amish women in blue dresses slip into their rollerblades. These small, precarious narratives throughout the exhibition open windows of sensitivity or empathy while making everyday moments into mythos. Together, the paintings in Which World offer space for reflection: to take stock of which worlds are personally familiar and which are unknown.

Pat Perry (b. Michigan, 1991) is an American visual artist exploring the romantic and quotidian scenes of life and human connection outside American and global centers. Perry's multi-disciplinary practice spans painting, drawing, photography, and large-scale outdoor mural installations, bringing Perry to far corners of the world. Beginning in the 2010s, the artist's ongoing series of sketchbooks and photos documenting his travels within the United States from freight trains became some of his best-known works, showing scenes of "America from backstage." Perry's murals and posters have called attention to various social causes through collaborations with groups such as the Beehive Design Collective, AptArts, No More Deaths, and the UN High Commissioner For Refugees. His studio work explores themes of social and emotional effects of 21st-century technologies, as well as knowledge limits of individual meaning- making. He has held solo exhibitions at Hashimoto Contemporary in New York and Los Angeles, Takashi Murakami's Hidari Zingaro Gallery in Tokyo, Dorothy Circus Gallery in Rome, and a museum show at UICA in Grand Rapids, Michigan.