Enoc Perez’s Architectural Portraits

Two new bodies of painter Enoc Perez’s work that focus on Bertram Goldberg’s Marina Towers in Chicago and Luigi Moretti’s Watergate in Washington, D.C., are now on exhibit in Watergate’s hometown at the Corcoran Gallery of Art. The Puerto Rican artist, who now lives in New York, has a penchant for building portraits. Throughout his career he has painted Oscar Niemeyer’s Palácio de Justica in Brazil; Pavilion of the Soviet Union, Expo 67, in Montreal; Gordon Bunshaft’s Lever House in New York, among others. Through them all is a running theme: utopia. As he told Zing Magazine in 2010: “I see buildings as metaphors, as abstractions. I like how architecture can embody ideas, ‘the future’, progress, enlightenment, optimism, etc. In fact it can project ideas in any direction. To paint architecture is to paint ideas. It is to paint an abstract reflection of current society.” The series on the Marina Towers, in its repetitiveness, echoes Claude Monet’s paintings of the Rouen Cathedral and Andy Warhol’s Marilyns, while the work on the Watergate will be installed and stretch across the gallery’s two rounded walls as part of Utopia. Through Feb. 10. • corcoran.org