Lee Scratch Perry - Repent Americans
Dem Passwords is pleased to present "Repent Americans," the second solo showing of artworks in the world by Lee "Scratch" Perry.
Perry's creative output collapses the space between intimate gesture and global proclamation with a genuine spontaneity and meditative power that has carried his evolving narrative for over 50 years. He is concurrently the commander of and the vessel for a ferocious creative energy he transfigures across mediums, wielding his "X" as his cross and sword, slashing lines that carve his canvases and territory all in one go. Perry's creations carry no pretension or aspiration to any order outside of his own. His work is the product of his mysterious mystical specializations and the evolution of a language and imaging system inflected by Obeah science and deployed in alliance with classical elemental energies.
In this exhibition of his works on paper, canvas and word processed writings, Perry plays both the prayer and the punisher through fast ink dispatches that contrast more elaborated paintings. Each work carries with it a unique psychic weight supported in part by Perry's legacy as the creative fount that nourished Bob Marley, among so many artists, and by his seemingly inexhaustible capacity for evolutionary abstraction.
Lee Scratch Perry was born in Jamaica in 1936. He lives and works in Switzerland.