Dante Perez, artist, 56

There was a strange pain in the exhibit “Lithium.” It would be the last exhibit of Dante Perez.

It was election day and by some quirk of fate I was at Art Informal in Greenhills, wanting to see what was Catalina Africa’s “Bull and Scepter” only to be bowled over by Perez’s works on the first floor.

Which is a surprise in itself, as you do not know what exactly draws you in. These are not his 2011 works in “Cold Turkey Files” where there was color and darkness, there was the absurdity of skulls and strange bodies, that you recognize as interesting at the very least. Then, Perez treated you to the noise of eeriness, the kind that haunts because it is strangely enough about your inability to capture, to arrive at a conclusion about each of these works.

“Lithium” isn’t easy to hold in one’s hand either. In fact, if anything, it is as evasive of apprehension, even when it seems quieter, calmer than we’ve seen of Perez’s works before. The idea of the lightest of metals also being the most reactive and flammable, is the irony that cuts across all these works.


As it might cut through the kind of cultural production that Perez engaged in. Also involved in cinema, Perez might be that actor you see often in independent films, yet you cannot name him. He has also done art direction and production design for films, and has collaborated with Lav Diaz given these two functions. With Diaz, Perez did “Heremias,” “Death in the Land of Encantos,” and “Florentina Hubaldo” as art director; and “Century of Birthing,” “Melancholia,” and “Butterflies Have No Memories” as production designer. He also did production design for Khavn dela Cruz’s “Mondomanila.”
The irony is in the kind of low profile that Perez kept, even when this list of films would not exist as works of artistic experimentation in Pinoy cinema without his hand. And it is a hand that invites you into worlds, familiar but different, always only eerie enough to haunt you.

This was also what was in “Lithium,” in fact. There are empty canvasses here, of skies and window views to nothingness, and there are objects, ones that float on the surface, ones that can only be about someone about to leave, if not something that’s falling. The absences are palpable in this set of works, and for some reason it is not so much a missing that is here, but a seeming insistence on taking our longing and loss, and wrapping it around ourselves. It is familiar, it is in these objects and visions of our days, and it is ours.

Perez was talking to us beyond what is here.  — KBK/HS, GMA News

Dante Perez’s remains lie in state at the St. Peter's Chapels in Commonwealth corner Tandang Sora, Quezon City, from 3:00 PM on May 29 2013 to 7:00 AM on June 1 2013. Information via plantingrice on Facebook.