Arturo Herrera, Untitled (Green Water Cave), 2004-15; paper cut-out collage, mixed media on paper.
For more than 30 years, German-based/Venezuelan-born artist Arturo Herrera has dedicated himself to investigating and understanding the complex histories and influences of abstraction and modernist visual languages. You are here is his first solo exhibition in New Mexico, featuring works that span almost three decades, from 1998 to today. The exhibition highlights the diverse nature of Herrera’s mark, showcasing sculpture, relief, painting, mixed media works on paper, collage, photography, glass, felt pieces, and two newly commissioned works, an architectural intervention titled Split, 2023, and Quarry, 2024, a large-scale site-specific wall painting.
Herrera uses layering, repetition, and recomposition techniques to articulate the conceptual possibilities of abstraction, such as atmosphere, symbolism, and metaphor. His approach to material, as subject and object, and the interplay between what is concealed and what is revealed, is the thread that weaves together these multidisciplinary artworks. Evoking the unconscious, he often mines fragments of familiar and nostalgic images from pop culture and arranges them with intricate sequences of shape, color, and line. The resulting composition conjures latent associations and creates a tangible exchange of readings between the artist, the artwork, and the viewer.
The show’s title, You are here, is a deceptively simple idea that elicits a sense of location internally and externally. It is more than a title; it’s a reflection of the exhibition’s essence, emphasizing a defined sense of place and presence that is private and individual. In an era of mass escapism, You are here can be wielded as a provocation, recited like an invocation, and can act as a humble reminder of where you, the viewer, find yourself in this exact moment that is unique and distinct from yesterday and tomorrow. It’s a reminder of the enduring power of art and abstraction to connect us to the present, ourselves, and each other in a world of constant change and distraction.
Arturo Herrera: You are here is on view at SITE Santa Fe through May 27, 2024. To learn more about the exhibition and Herrera, click here.