Opening Reception: Saturday, January 29 6-8 PM
Sikkema Jenkins & Co. is pleased to present an exhibition of
new works by Arturo Herrera, his sixth solo show at the
gallery, on view from January 29th through March 5.
In the new works on paper and large scale wall painting
featured in the exhibition, Herrera insists on the validity of
fragmentation as a mode for an impure kind of abstraction.
Working with a multiplicity of disconnected references, the
artist delves into a complex dialogue between visceral
fragments and a palpable totality, both pregnant with a
variety of meanings. Specific objects uprooted from popular
culture are still recognizable but are no longer the sole
protagonists of images where an underlying structure
reveals a restless and throbbing space on the verge of
shattering itself. All the works display a tactile quality that
reinforces the dynamic struggle between referentiality and
the desire for a concrete reality, a need for closure that is
ultimately out of reach. Shifting between being legible and
abstract, the collages juxtapose a myriad of cut-out and
painted elements into a wholeness that is continually in flux
and without hierarchy. Inviting and resisting dissection, all
the works in the exhibition reexamine abstraction as a
contaminated idiom that keeps on transforming itself.
Arturo Herrera’s work has been exhibited throughout the
United States and Europe in numerous group and solo
exhibitions. He has had recent solo exhibitions at Haus am
Waldsee, in Berlin, Germany (2010); Galleria Franco Noero in
Torino, Italy (2009); and Sala TAC in Caracas, Venezuela
(2009). On February 3rd, a solo exhibition by Arturo Herrera
will open at the Americas Society located at 680 Park
Avenue in New York. The installation, titled Les Noces (The
Wedding), incorporates Igor Stravinsky’s 1923 score of the
same name and digitally altered fragments of the artist’s
works into an ever-shifting dance of abstract black and
white images. The exhibition will also feature works on
paper, sculptures, and a series of 80 photographs. More
information at www.americas-society.org.
Herrera was born in Caracas, Venezuela. He lives and works
in Berlin.
