Arturo Herrera Caracas, Venezuela, born 1959
AZZURO, 2025
Felt, acrylic on canvas
2 parts: 43 1/4 x 45 1/4 inches (109.9 x 114.8 cm) each
Framed: 45 3/4 x 47 3/4 inches (116.2 x 121.3 cm) each, overall: 91 1/2 x 47 3/4 inches (232.4 x 121.3 cm) abutted
Framed: 45 3/4 x 47 3/4 inches (116.2 x 121.3 cm) each, overall: 91 1/2 x 47 3/4 inches (232.4 x 121.3 cm) abutted
Arturo Herrera’s multimedia work engages the legacies of Modernism through the visual strategies of fragmentation, repetition, and reconstruction. His bold, layered compositions revel in the tension between what is revealed...
Arturo Herrera’s multimedia work engages the legacies of Modernism through the visual strategies of fragmentation, repetition, and reconstruction. His bold, layered compositions revel in the tension between what is revealed and what is concealed, and the mutability of images within different pictorial contexts. Painterly gestures and found imagery adjoin and overlap with flat abstraction and gaps in color, while the ghosted vestiges of bodily figures hint at a familiar presence. Like pauses in a piece of music, the intentional creation of space amongst forms becomes its own unit of meaning.
In his recent body of cut-out felt collages such as "AZZURO" (2025), Herrera continues to explore the essential nature of negative spaces when reading a work. These large-scale works are composed of a dense network of matte felt overlaid upon an acrylic or collaged abstraction. The apertures created by the felt fragments paradoxically expose the larger work concealed beneath, which cannot ever be experienced in its totality. It is precisely this dependent relationship between the opaque felt cut-outs and the underlying compositions that energize the works in a reciprocal manner.
Arturo Herrera (born 1959, Caracas) received a BFA from the University of Tulsa and his MFA from the University of Illinois at Chicago. Recent solo exhibitions include Arturo Herrera: 'Fare un giro' at Spazio Supernova, Rome, Italy (2024); Arturo Herrera: 'You are here' at SITE Santa Fe, New Mexico (2024); and Arturo Herrera: 'Between' at The Contemporary Dayton, Ohio (2023). His long-term, site-specific wall paintings can be seen at The Bass Museum of Art, Miami, Florida; Bloomberg European Headquarters, London; FORMA Miami, Florida; and the Tate Modern, London.
In his recent body of cut-out felt collages such as "AZZURO" (2025), Herrera continues to explore the essential nature of negative spaces when reading a work. These large-scale works are composed of a dense network of matte felt overlaid upon an acrylic or collaged abstraction. The apertures created by the felt fragments paradoxically expose the larger work concealed beneath, which cannot ever be experienced in its totality. It is precisely this dependent relationship between the opaque felt cut-outs and the underlying compositions that energize the works in a reciprocal manner.
Arturo Herrera (born 1959, Caracas) received a BFA from the University of Tulsa and his MFA from the University of Illinois at Chicago. Recent solo exhibitions include Arturo Herrera: 'Fare un giro' at Spazio Supernova, Rome, Italy (2024); Arturo Herrera: 'You are here' at SITE Santa Fe, New Mexico (2024); and Arturo Herrera: 'Between' at The Contemporary Dayton, Ohio (2023). His long-term, site-specific wall paintings can be seen at The Bass Museum of Art, Miami, Florida; Bloomberg European Headquarters, London; FORMA Miami, Florida; and the Tate Modern, London.
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