Arturo Herrera
Arturo Herrera
Lab Grant Resident
“If, in the end, the work Herrera has created with Dieu Donné sounds and acts nothing at all like a traditional watermark, confounding rather than clarifying, made of color not light, it may be useful to consider a second meaning of the word. Watermarks, to residents of desert floodplains, are not internal paper designs but tall wooden sticks wedged into the ground by the side of the road, giant rulers standing straight and tall. Numbers measured along the stocks’ lengths indicate the height to which floodwaters can use in a particular wash. Many watermarks bear digits in excess of average adult height, raising the specter of drowning were one to fine onesself in that place at the wrong time. Related to this kind of watermark are the lines of sediment and rot left on the sides of houses and the trunks of trees in a flooded area. After the waters have fallen, the high water level can be gauged by measuring these horizontal tracings. Allow me, if you will, to suggest that Arturo Herrera’s edition perversely derives from both the papermaker’s definition of the watermark and the flood watcher’s: a paper drawing formed by layers of displaced pulp, sediment left in the wake of a drowning tide of images, a tide whose high water mark is measured by a ruler made of cadmium orange paper.”
— Lori Waxman, Excerpt from How to drown while looking at a piece of paper, Essay for Arturo Herrera, Lab Grant Publication Series No. 8, Dieu Donné
About the Artist
Arturo Herrera (b.1959, Caracas, Venezuela) creates colorful abstract paintings using the strategies of fragmentation and layering adapted from his earlier collage based work. His diverse body of work (most prominently collage, felt sculpture, and wall painting) references the complex legacy of abstraction using modernist strategies of fragmentation, re-composition, and repetition. His pieces often employ found material and incorporate figures and imagery derived from popular culture, prompting a multiplicity of references and readings for viewers to interpret.
Born in Caracas, Venezuela, Herrera received a BFA from the University of Tulsa and an MFA from the University of Illinois at Chicago. His most recent site specific installations can be found at The Bass Museum of Art in Miami; Officine Grandi Riparazioni / OGR in Turin; and Bloomberg European Headquarters in London. In 2016, the Tate Modern commissioned Herrera to create a long-term wall painting for the sixth-floor restaurant. A wall installation was also recently acquired by the Art Institute of Chicago for their permanent collection. His work is also in the collection of the Museo Reina Sofia, Madrid; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; The Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, and many others. He is the recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, The Pollock-Krasner Foundation, ArtPace San Antonio, The Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation and the DAAD, Berlin. Herrera lives and works in Berlin. (Source: Sikkema Jenkins & Co.)
For more information, please visit their website: https://arturoherrera.org