“The Rake’s Progress (The Life and Times of Rafael Perez)” - 2001.
A series commissioned by the COLA (City of Los Angeles) artist grant for exhibition at the Skirball Museum in Los Angeles in 2002, while I was living in the Rampart District of Los Angeles (East Hollywood).
The series was inspired by The Rake’s Progress paintings by William Hogarth in 1780’s, which follow the life of a young man in London. The series shows the decline and fall of Tom Rakewell, the son and heir of a rich merchant, who wastes all his money on luxurious living, prostitution and gambling, and as a consequence is imprisoned and ultimately ends up at the Bethlem Hospital (Bedlam) for the mentally ill.
My series follows the career of the notorious LAPD officer Rafael Perez, who’s misdeeds and horrific actions landed him in prison in what became known as the Rampart Scandal. From Wiki: “The Rampart Scandal” involved widespread police corruption in the Community Resources Against Street Hoodlums(CRASH) anti-gang unit of the LAPD's Rampart Division in the late 1990s. More than 70 police officers either assigned to or associated with the Rampart CRASH unit were implicated in some form of misconduct, making it one of the most widespread cases of documented police corruption in U.S. history, responsible for a long list of offenses including unprovoked shootings, unprovoked beatings, planting of false evidence, stealing and dealing narcotics, bank robbery, perjury,, and the covering up of evidence of these activities
In the first scene, we meet the new officer Perez on his graduation from the police academy at Elysian Park, proudly pointing to his badge as other officers preen.
In the second scene, Perez and his partners do coke and smoke pot in the back room of the Short Stop bar near Dodger Stadium - a notorious “cop bar” in L.A.
In the third scene, we see Perez and his partner in a home invasion, robbing and shooting a man in his living room, with a view of downtown L.A. out the window and lines of coke on the table, as his girlfriend pleads mercy.
In the last scene, we see Perez in prison, arguing over use of the payphone while other inmates with “Cops” on TV.
