"I'm Mexican as long as I am myself."

The HangART-7 exhibition “Una Excursión Mexicana” in Salzburg’s Hangar-7, running until August 28, is a show of works by seven young, very individual Mexican artists. Answering questionnaires, they each describe their approach to art – and share some inside information along the way. Part Three: Eric Pérez.

Thirty-five-year-old Eric Pérez paints from memory and doesn’t use photos or pictures as models. Among other things, his paintings, which almost look like photographs, tell stories about the mythical landscapes of the Aztecs and the mythological importance of the volcano. As with the other artists exhibiting in Hangar-7, his works represent the complicated relationship to Mexican tradition in art – a tradition they’ve inherited but also try to detach themselves from. Pérez discloses how he works and shares an anecdote about a “secret link.”

How much connects you to the six other artists in this exhibition? And how much separates you?

Connects: We all live in the same place and time; we are connected through what we live; we all share our context. Separates: Our own experience of art. Our work is very individual – there are very few things to share in that respect.

What makes your art “typically Mexican?” Why couldn’t it have been created in any other country?

What makes me Mexican is what I can’t avoid. I am Mexican as long as I am myself: being myself makes me Mexican.

Please give us three words that describe your work process.

I work according to vital experiences that I process without an established method: seeing, asking, painting.

... and three that describe your artworks.

Memory. Nature. Humanism.

What do you feel when people observe your work and you think it affects them – no matter how?

I feel satisfaction. It’s the ideal way.

Could you share with us a very personal anecdote about one of the pieces exhibited in Hangar-7 – or give us some sort of insider information about it that only you have been privy to until now?

I was once in San José del Pacifico, a little place in the middle of Sierra Madre in the state of Oaxaca. Clouds were approaching. The painting ‘San José del Pacifico’ is the result of two experiences I had. I was sick there and hallucinated about an old man. Later, I saw a film by the Korean director Kim Ki-Duk in which, at the end, an old man becomes a recluse, climbs a mountain and has a view of the whole landscape. There’s a secret link between both these things somewhere in my subconscious.