Lee Scratch Perry

Lee Scratch Perry (1936–2021) lived and worked between Einsiedeln and Negril, Jamaica. Born in a remote Jamaican village in 1936, he moved to Kingston in 1961 to pursue a career in music after a divine voice directed him there. After founding the infamous Black Ark Studio, Perry became one of the pioneering forces in the development of reggae and dub. He has worked with artists including Bob Marley and the Wailers, Junior Murvin, the Beastie Boys, and The Clash, among many others, and was awarded a Grammy for Best Reggae Album in 2003. By the end of the Seventies Lee Scratch Perry started painting occult symbols and ‚dub-collages‘ around his studio, which gradually developed into a multidisciplinary Gesamtkunstwerk practice. His output took on the form of multi-layered clusters that continually shift and change; creating an ever-expanding network of paradisal animals, cartoon figures and saints using paint, mirrors, rocks, photographs, video and computer-transmitted word-association poems – in a ceaseless quest to venerate the Almighty.

Recent exhibitions include: Cabaret Voltaire, Zurich (2024, solo); NMAAHC / Smithsonian Institute, Washington DC, US (2023); Halle für Kunst Steiermark, Graz, AT (2022); MACRO, Rome, IT (2022); 34th Sao Paulo Biennial, BR (2021); Swiss Institute, New York, US (2019, solo).

Lee Scratch Perry, Mirror Master Futures Yard, 2018, installation view Studio Einsiedeln, Switzerland

Lee Scratch Perry, Nativity Painting (Haus zur Liebe install) 2020, installation view suns.works, Zurich

Lee Scratch Perry, Mirror Master Futures Yard, 2019, installation view Swiss Institute, New York,

Lee Scratch Perry, Untitled collage (Black Ark), mid 2000’s; video tapes and collage on fabric,, 33 x 34 cm

Lee Scratch Perry, Super Ape installation view at MACRO Museum, Rome IT

Lee Scratch Perry, Jamaica Shape (Black Ark), 2010, collage and mixed media on board

Lee Scratch Perry, Eye fa Eye, 2020, collage and acrylic on canvas