Dago Perez is a Los Angeles-based visual artist. Born in 1977 and raised in Mid-City LA, he is the oldest of four children born to Mexican immigrant parents. His induction into American culture and the English language came from an immersion into 1980’s pop culture and television. This act of tacit observation and absorption of visual sensory overload became fundamental to Perez’s practice.

Perez works across a range of media with an emphasis in painting and drawing. While the work is rooted in a formalist play of form, color, and mark making, it is most notable for its interjections of cryptic, semiotic imagery. In his most recent body of work, Perez more heavily abstracts these references, emphasizing their potential as pre-linguistic communicators.
He works the surface of his canvases methodically over time. Delicate, scratchy line work reveals vibrant, premeditated under paintings. Flat layers of spray paint, and sumptuous painterly marks overlay one another, locking each composition in balance.

Perez earned his Bachelor's Degree from the University of California, Los Angeles and currently lives and works in Leimert Park.

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