PERI HELIO

Peri Helio (Vigo, 1983) has a degree in Mathematics, specialising in Astronomy, and studied artistic screen printing at the Escuela Municipal de Artes y Oficios de Vigo (EMAO).

In 2001 he joined the Faculty of Mathematics at the University of Santiago de Compostela. It is in this city that he will live and develop his artistic activity, which is closely linked to urban art and public space. His friendship with Liqen and Pelucas would undoubtedly influence his work during these years, as would his association with the Pontevedra Faculty of Fine Arts, which would determine his artistic training, which was essentially autodidactic.

Around 2005, Peri Helio’s work began to acquire a language of its own that would define his current style, creating a particular universe of a dreamlike character, with clear evocations and influences of surrealism and symbolism.

After his stay in Tenerife between 2007 and 2008, where he developed his artistic activity with the local collective Los Chinijos Del Millo, he tended to work in murals of increasingly larger format, while participating in various urban art festivals, such as Desordes Creativas, and his professional career was definitely oriented towards art.

Alongside his mural work, Peri usually works on paper, with ink being one of his favourite materials. He has also been working with ceramics for some years, thanks to his teacher Emilia Guimeráns, and has recently set up his own silkscreen workshop, as well as studying wood engraving at the Centro Internacional de la Estampa Contemporanea (CIEC) in Betanzos.

In all these years, Peri has created numerous murals in different cities in Spain, Italy, Portugal, France and Germany, and has participated in urban art festivals such as IBUG, Desvelarte or Desordes Creativas, among others.  He has also held individual and collective exhibitions in different spaces and countries, such as the Espacio D of the Reina Sofía Museum (Madrid, Spain), the Exhibition Hall of the Galicia Auditorium (Santiago de Compostela, Spain), the Museum of Pontevedra (Pontevedra, Spain), Maia’s Forum (Maia, Portugal), the BECUH space (Porto, Portugal), Mambo Gallery (Vigo, Spain), La Frontera (Rome, Italy). … and his work has been published in several magazines and books such as “Los nombres esenciales del Graffiti y el Arte Urbano español”, published by Lunwerg, or the first volume of “Street Art & Graffiti. Vol.1”, published by Fronteira Do Caos Editores.

Artist Statement

I have always poured into my drawings all my interests, doubts, fears, desires and personal struggles, so that my work has eventually acquired an important, albeit subtle, autobiographical component.

In this sense, my academic background – I studied mathematics and specialised in astronomy – is combined with my artistic interests, giving rise to a very personal work with a markedly dreamlike and surrealistic character, in which both geometry and astronomy are established as essential elements.

Critical of contemporary society, visual philosopher of the human condition and observer of nature and its changes. These are all aspects of my personality that are evident in the metaphorical language of my work.

Although my artistic career is closely linked to urban art and public space, my creative process currently combines several disciplines, among which mural painting and drawing stand out, but which also include ceramics or silkscreen printing, among others… this diversity has helped to develop my creative process while enriching the conceptual basis on which my works are based.