| Nicholas Weist: The Peres Projects program has outposts in four cities internationally, although strangely most are in the cities’ respective Chinatowns. Are you sesame chicken or orange beef? Javier Peres: Well, not so strange for me. Everyone knows I have a huge Asian fetish. Well not really a fetish, more like an addiction. My mother use to say I had an addictive personality, but she was wrong: I like what I like, when I like it, and I don’t give a fuck. Know what I mean? |
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Javier Peres is an art dealer who lives (mostly) in Los Angeles, and Nicholas Weist is the executive editor of NY Arts.
Nicholas Weist: The Peres Projects program has outposts in four cities internationally, although strangely most are in the cities’ respective Chinatowns. Are you sesame chicken or orange beef?
Javier Peres: Well, not so strange for me. Everyone knows I have a huge Asian fetish. Well not really a fetish, more like an addiction. My mother use to say I had an addictive personality, but she was wrong: I like what I like, when I like it, and I don’t give a fuck. Know what I mean?
I do love the cheapness of Asian neighborhoods. You can get anything done in these hoods, and that’s very handy running a gallery, especially when you’re running more than one at a time…but in the future, maybe even in the near future, I will be opening spaces in non-Asian neighborhoods.
And I love, love orange beef, especially when they make it with really spicy red Chile peppers. Although I must say I hardly ever eat Chinese these days; my BF, Jeppe, isn’t so into it. And what he says I do, or else.
NW: Jeppe looks sort of like a tall, blonde version of you. How did you meet Herr Aryan Peres? Do you guys ever wear matching outfits?
JP: Well I don’t know that I agree that we look alike. I guess we do both have facial hair. Some people have even begun to call us bears!?!? What the fuck? I mean I’ve always liked big guys, and but for one recent exception have only ever dated big guys, but this time it’s a whole new ball game. Jeppe has me for good. He is the only one for me, for good! We met a few different times in both LA and Berlin, he is Senior in the Danish pop band Junior Senior, so we have various friends in common. One night we hung out for a very, very long time, like Javier-style, and before I knew it I was totally going for it with Jeppe. He was into it too, and that was that. L-O-V-E!
Funny you should mention matching outfits, have you seen my myspace page? I have this habit of staying in hotels, even in cities where I have a home. We were having a week-long bender and hotel-hopping from the Chateau to the Beverly Hills to the Bel Air, and I escaped one day and hit American Apparel and bought a shitload of matching summer outfits. Like the works, all shit that neither of us would never wear, but we did that week and it was super funny—matching Speedos, shorts, tank tops, and jackets. It was really funny when 50 Cent showed up at the pool at the BH Hotel and we were there alone with our matching outfits.
NW: Did you see Bill Arning’s interview with Zach Feuer where he called Zach “The Token Heterosexual Bear of the Week”? Right now I’m picturing you, Zach, and Oliver Kamm bare-chested and rubbing your beards together in an Ernesto Neto installation, while Daniel Reich eats popcorn and claps on the sidelines. Then the universe explodes. Has Junior Senior ever done projects with you or your artists? There’s a very slight boundary between you as a person and your work as an art dealer.
JP: I love Bill Arning. I used to read his articles for Honcho, back in the day when Bruce LaBruce did photos and articles for them. I’d miss those days if the current ones weren’t so damn good! And Oliver is a very hot dude, no doubt! Never really thought of Zach as a bear, but honestly it’s not a term I use or think much about. Although it keeps coming up lately since Jeppe is a big boy and I usually have a beard or moustache, at least for the last year or two. Anyhow I’ve never done anything with Junior Senior other than been a roadie.
I have to clarify something though, as it relates to my personal life and my professional life. It is true that in many instances I do cross boundaries and allow one role to spill into the other, but I do so when I want and in a way that is totally natural to me. In other words I don’t package it as such, it’s just how I choose to live my life. You know what I mean? I have no choice: it’s how I am.
But this doesn’t mean that I take my role as an art dealer any less seriously, which has been suggested from time to time, mainly because they think I am this all-the-time party animal. Maybe I am or I’m not—really only those that are out with me know what I do and don’t do. A lot of people have the wrong idea about me because they aren’t part of my life or circle, so they have no factual basis for anything they think about me other than what they read—and the reality is that anything they read they should be wary of. I’m prone to not always be so candid when I speak to the press…. Of course not with you Nick, I only speak the truth now.
NW: I hope nobody thinks I got you drunk for this. Well at the risk of getting a little meta, I’d like to talk about your relationship to the press. I think we have before, but I’m pretty sure we were wasted.
JP: Wouldn’t be the first time. Did you see my interview in BUTT? Fucking hell! But half of what I say at any time, drunk or not, I do mean…the other half I don’t mean.
NW: Yeah, it was an amazing interview. BUTT is a sort of crossover magazine, but you and your artists have appeared in fashion and lifestyle mags too. It seems like that’s a double-edged sword—increased visibility at the risk of being perceived as part of low culture. Or is there such a thing as low culture?
JP: I think Warhol pretty much answered that…but of course there are those who think there is, and at times I agree with them, though most of the time I don’t.
But the media exists and it’s fucking powerful and I’m totally up for engaging it and I always have an agenda when I speak to the media. Just as the media has one when they cover Peres Projects artists or even me. And to be frank I do like the fact that the media becomes interested in the people I represent. I find it flattering somehow, but maybe that is just the Latin in me. It’s like the difference between celebs in Southern Europe and those in the US. In Southern Europe they are always thankful and appreciative of their public; in the US, they often tell the public to fuck off. I am a bit of both, but more often favor the former.
NW: What does Athens think of your new project?
JP: I have to admit that I can have a populist approach to art: like it’s not just for the fucking filthy rich, it doesn’t have to be. So far the Athenians have been totally receptive. I just had a four-day series of events—well actually more like a birthday celebration for me—but it also introduced the artists I represent and a bunch of other friends to Greece.
The building is in a run-down part of the city, but the building itself is in quite good condition. Not “good” meaning fancy, but it’s not falling apart like others in the area are. There are fucked up walls and graffiti—and that sort of thing we’re not changing. I don’t want a perfect space, just an intervention for a few months, plus performances, events, and some parties…I may even produce a film there.
NW: Your and Terence Koh’s opening party for Asia Song Society (ASS) ended when the cops came to scold the guys who were hanging out naked on the street, and tell the 300 other rowdies to go home. But no one really left—the cops were outnumbered and unsure of themselves. The party itself became what you’re describing…an art intervention, performance, and populist uprising.
JP: True. The whole premise of the party was to recreate the "idea" of the legendary NYC gay bar the cock. Terence made a sculpture where he took the image of the red neon rooster outside of the cock and made it bigger and white, with some other changes, and installed it on the window of the tiny ASS space. The interior of the space was painted totally pitch and shiny black.
You couldn’t see a thing in there. We hired some go-go boys we know and invited everyone over. I sadly didn’t come until the police were already kicking everyone out (I don’t like crowds and small spaces, so I went to a dinner with Dan Colen instead and came for the after-after party). But true it is: the police, despite handing out something like 30 tickets for loitering or what not, couldn’t really end the party. When they left a smaller group of us went to the back back of ASS and just hung out there until the wee wee hours of the morning. I love NYC for nights and things like that. We’re planning some really good ones for the year ahead too…and possibly with new ASS locations, both in and out of NYC…like London…
