Arturo Herrera: From This Day Forward

 

Untitled, 2020

 

‘Can I make something so clear ambiguous? Can I uproot it? In which ways is the baggage that we bring to the new image relevant to the vivid recollections within our cultural context? I am attracted to juxtaposing invented images and readymade images without establishing explicit relations between elements.’ — Arturo Herrera

Installation view  

 

 

As a practitioner of the art of collage myself, I was eager to catch this exhibition of collages by Arturo Herrera, a consumate practitioner of this particular discipline. Many of the works here were completed in self-isolation during last years' initial lockdown due to the Coronavirus pandemic. On the evidence presented here, just like myself, Herrera found that period of high anxiety to also be a particularly rich, creative and prolific term where we were afforded the space, time and opportunity to focus fully on our craft. The timing of this show of collaged artworks is quite appropriate given that it is roughly one hundred years since the art and technique of collage has come to be recognised and accepted as a legitimate form of modern/fine art. The technique of collage of course has existed in older cultures such as those of China, Japan, and the Middle Ages, but it was Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque's coining of the term Papier collé to refer to the magazine and newspaper clippings they attached to the surfaces of their art as well as the other found objects that distinguishes collage, and elevates it to its own distinct art form. Herrera really appears to have had fun referencing and plundering the history of collage in these works, as I detected not only homages to the works of Picasso and Braque, but also in his mainly black and white works below, references to the works of Max Ernst who created the seminal wordless collage novel - Une Semaine De Bonté (A Week of Kindness). These collage works by Herrera are wonderful, dizzying mash-ups of both found materials and discarded/recycled elements from the artists own ouevre, used to create new works with a certain depth, densely layering and drawing from elements of both high and low culture. They are a beautiful mash-up of painterly techniques and more immediate graphic materials. I also admired the way in which Herrera like Matisse wasn't afraid of scale with some of these collaged pieces and went really large in size in some instances. The way in which the collages were presented on the gallery walls with painted lines and text specifically for this exhibition also made for an immersive collage experience in itself.

 

 

detail

 

Arturo Herrera: From This Day Forward

until 6th June

Thomas Dane

3 & 11 Duke Street

St James's

London

SW1