Arturo Herrera: Castles, Dwarfs, and Happychaps
March 11, 2007—September 3, 2007Exhibition Reception: Sunday, March 11, 2007; 3 to 5 pm
Venezuelan-born artist Arturo Herrera will be “pouncing” at The Aldrich in preparation for his upcoming exhibition, Castles, Dwarfs, and Happychaps. The exhibition reception will be held at the Museum on Sunday, March 11, from 3:00 to 5:00 pm. Round-trip transportation from New York City is available; please call the Museum at 203.438.4519 for reservations.
Herrera, with the help of his assistants, will use a Renaissance technique called pouncing to transfer a design from paper to the gallery wall. Working from a giant paper sketch called a cartoon, Herrera and his team will punch holes through the paper against the wall. Next they will pat the cartoon with small fabric sacks filled with dry colored pigments, leaving a series of dots on the wall’s surface. Aldrich curatorial director Jessica Hough explains, “The result will be a complex drawing of knotted dwarfs, complete with pick axes and gemstones, composed of dots of several colors.” Hough also points out that “in the Renaissance a pounce drawing would be the starting point for an oil painting or fresco, but here Herrera uses the traditional technique to achieve a contemporary end.”additional images | click to enlarge
Arturo Herrera's work can take the form of a large-scale installation of cut felt, a wall painting, or an intimate work on paper. He borrows imagery from children's books and other popular-culture sources to create hybrid works of art that are both familiar and foreign. For his exhibition at The Aldrich, which will feature work dating from 1998 through the present, Herrera has built an exhibition around the specific motifs of castles, dwarfs, and what he refers to as “happychaps”. Besides the 22-foot-long, floor-to-ceiling pounced drawing, the exhibition will also include works on, and meticulously cut from, paper.
Arturo Herrera was born in 1959 in Caracas, Venezuela, and now lives and works in Berlin and New York. He studied at the University of Tulsa, OK, and the University of Illinois at Chicago. His work was first seen in a group exhibition in 1992 and in a solo exhibition in 1993. Herrera has received international acclaim, including a DAAD Fellowship. He has had solo exhibitions at Centre d’Art Contemporain, Geneva; Dia Center for the Arts, New York; Centro Galego de Arte Contemporánea, Santiago de Compostela; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; UCLA Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; and P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center, New York, among others. His work appeared in the Whitney Biennial (2002). The Museum of Modern Art in New York will also be featuring Herrera in an exhibition this winter.Top of page: Arturo Herrera: Keep In Touch (Set #3) (detail), 2004. Courtesy of the artist and Sikkema Jenkins & Co.
