Arturo Herrera (b. 1959)

Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York
Acquired from the above, 2005

This work has been examined plexiglas. The media is stable. The work is ready to hang.
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Much of Arturo Herrera’s work navigates the boundaries of abstraction and figuration. In this vein, he borrows methods from drawings made for children, and colouring books, in which an artist or maker proposes a simple drawing that a child must finish by adding color. To create this work, Herrera first created an initial drawing black and white drawing in 2004 of a pond with undulating water from which a few rocks poke out. He then cut the paper into new, lyrical forms, which he rearranged to remove the work from the clearly figurative and open it to the abstract.

Some elements of the original drawing remain recognizable; the rocks become flying roots and tendrils, a landscape horizon line is still perceptible, and in the bottom left quadrant appears the pond, gently rippled by the breeze. At the same time, the work retains the spontaneous character that Paul Klee referred to as “A line going for a walk,” and reaches into the realm of pure abstraction. While this charming work bears notable formal similarities to abstract expressionist paintings and surrealist automatic drawings, Herrera carefully blurs the distinction between abstraction and figuration. Herrera is captivated by the dialogue between high and low culture and navigates this unexplored middle territory in surprising and whimsical ways.