Arturo Herrera
dal 30/3/2007 al 19/5/2007
Segnalato da
30/3/2007
Arturo Herrera
Kettle's Yard, Cambridge
Solo show. Using the camera instead of the craft knife to cut and collage, this group of black and white photographs provides a key reference point for Herrera's reflexive experiments with abstraction.
Solo show
Kettle's Yard and the Ikon Gallery in Birmingham are presenting,
concurrently, the first major exhibitions in the UK of Venezuelan artist
Arturo Herrera.
The Cambridge exhibition provides a survey of his work comprising collage,
painting, photography and sculpture. Characteristically it fuses references
from art history with others derived from the realms of design and popular
culture.
The exhibition includes a series of eighty photographic abstractions' which
were made by reframing details from collages and drawings in the artist's
studio. Using the camera instead of the craft knife to cut and collage, this
group of black and white photographs provides a key reference point for
Herrera's reflexive experiments with abstraction.
As well as using found images, usually from children's books or cartoons,
Herrera produces his own material for the collages, painting and drawing on
hundreds of sheets of paper that are later cut and collaged into works where
painted and printed marks are often difficult to tell apart. Blending the
expressive drips and smears of action painting with the graphic language of
children's colouring books, Herrera confuses figurative and abstract
references. Recognisable images are broken up to generate new meanings and
expanded to draw on a wider set of associations. The resulting part-drawn,
part-cut compositions hark back to the Surrealists and Dadaists'
psychologically charged juxtapositions.
On one level, Herrera's work is simply and joyously about relationships
between colour and form, line and space in a redemptive, modernist sense
on another, his complex images reveal a post-modern reflexivity in their
mixing of quotations, their fragmented engagement with visual culture, and
the indefinite presence of the artist.
Arturo Herrera was born in Caracas, Venezuela, in 1959. He studied in the
United States and currently lives and works in Berlin and New York. He is
represented by Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York. The Ikon Gallery exhibition
runs from 28 March to 20 May.
Kettle's Yard
Castle Street - Cambridge