ARTURO HERRERA: Collage is something
that you could do very inexpensively.
When I started I had no space.
You know uh, money was tight and so this allowed me to,
to move forward without the elements that are required like canvases, brushes.
You need Xacto blade, scissors, uh, glue and, and paper.
It was accessible, it was uh, in the studio and um,
you could actually do it on a table with very little resources.
This pile had been added for many years.
When one thing was uh,
at the beginning easily recognizable as a foot or as a hat,
now it’s just become just a shape of color.
You have the, in the pile of fragments there is huge variety,
handmade and also found.
This is from one of my drawings from a printed book.
Here is paper from coloring books.
This is a water color shape, acrylic on paper, crayon and ink,
construction paper, printed paper.
Finger painting or paint directly applied from the tube.
Uh, crayon also.
Marbleized paper.
Paint-by-numbers found in a secondhand shop,
here you see is very old.
And I’m interested in how can an image that is so well composed
and it’s so clear and it’s so objective uh,
it’s made out of this disparate fragments.
Glued, forced to be together to create uh,
image that will have a different reading from
what the fragments you know uh, say.
Structure is a preoccupation of mine.
I’m always looking for something that will hold the image into place.
What I want to create is basically an image
that has you know aesthetic and also this conceptual power.
The world of cartoons and animation is now a universal language.
And I think everybody has specific memories to specific characters uh, or stories.
The idea of memory with images of childhood or images of uh,
that are represented in the, you know, pop culture are as important as any other image.
So people seem to have very strong attachments to those.
I think being Latin American you’re,
you’re made up of so many fragments from different cultures.
Being from Venezuela you are a mixture of things.
I mean you’re both uh, from the region
and you’re also North American, South American, Central American.
So you’re American.
And being there you know that you’re part of the European tradition
and the American tradition.
It was totally uh, natural for us to shift from you know uh,
from going from a European film to uh,
a samba concert, uh,
from a Walt Disney cartoon festival to uh, to folk…
folkloristic dancing from Venezuela.
So it was all very natural.
It was a, it was never any kind of division about
what consisted in high culture or low culture.
So we, I think everybody in Latin America takes everything
because you know that you are just a mixture of things.
Moving to a new country and now living in Berlin is, uh,
allows you to uh, try new things.
The beginning when I moved here was difficult,
because I wanted to keep working with the same,
at the same rhythm as I was working in New York.
Producing, producing, working, producing without thinking too much.
And here it’s the other, it’s the opposite way.
There’s more time to think, there’s more time to reflect on what you’re doing.
I trying to use the camera lens as a,
as a blade that cuts rectangular fragments from my own drawings.
And then once the roll is done, then I put it into water.
And that’s what another much, much more specific uh,
way of chance happens.
And um, the way the water slips into the film
and if it’s hot water or cold or coffee or you know, with ice cubes,
then that will effect the emulsion on the film.
It’s interesting to me after I did the photographs is that um,
images that I thought that were already finished
and that paper form and its collages have a complete different life now.
Life is made of just connecting things.
We’re not really clear about why we connect things.
Our emotional life is you know a very important part of this.
And I think that memory is also a very important part of this and desire.
So when looking at visual images,
you could actually be informed by association only.
It’s satisfying to see them for the first time up on the wall.
And the whole tone quality is almost like graphite.
It’s almost like drawing.
Usually photography is so much about perfect blacks and whites and uh,
these are really about perfect grays.
So I’m interested in this kind of ambiguity about the images.
And they’re clearly based on fragments
and they’re being juxtaposed as opposed to being forced to be together.
And yet they’re just abstractions.
I think there is a potential for these images to communicate
different things to different viewers uh,
in a very touching way. Uh, but that experience is not a public experiences,
it’s a very, very private
and it’s very, very personal.
My interest in wall paintings is that
it takes the imagery to a larger scale
and provides a different kind of impact for the viewer.
Well this is the template for the painter who executed the wall painting.
The drawing is to scale.
Every shape has been identified with a color.
The numbers correspond to the Pantone colors.
Any paint stored will be able to reproduce them.
The wall painter will uh, transfer these lines onto the wall directly.
And then he will just follow the template to paint color by color.
It’s a little bit peculiar because the final result,
you really have no idea until you are finished there.
I tend to take into consideration the space where the paintings will be placed.
The wall painting for the museum in Santiago de Compostela,
it’s a different set of circumstances
because the architecture is very prominent.
Never done this before where an image has uh, could see the…
only be seen from the upper galleries
and then you can actually go down and see it from, from below.
Uh, so it’s an interesting challenge and uh,
the image is, comes from one of the collages uh,
and it’s going to be done by a professional, uh,
sign painter of movie posters uh, from Madrid.
What I’m working on right now is trying to give very simple instructions,
preliminary instructions to the painter.
So it actually helps to have this file here to be able to think
and reconsider different aspects,
to tell the painter what to do exactly
because I’m not going to be there when he executes this piece.
I have never done a piece that is in a space that is actually dissected like this,
and with two unusual elements in it which is a window door on the wall,
where the wall painting will be executed
and then a bridge that connects the galleries into that window.
So I don’t know what the effect will be
and so I’m hoping that all the elements and the imagery itself
will also convey some kind of connection with the architecture.
Santiago is such an important place for pilgrimage.
There is so much history there.
But the museum is very close to the cathedral.
So it’s a very charged city.
The wall painting actually has these references to movement,
upwards or downward,
which is interesting to me because in Santiago,
people come with lots of hopes and ideas, memories.
They go there looking for something which,
in a sense, it’s a very spiritual connection.
That maybe is what allowed me to take that image and to bring it into Santiago.
I think it’s still potential for abstraction to become
a viable language of visual communication.
The same thing with collage.
I think we need to explore what else they could do.
Going to continue, see what I could say with this, with this language.
The longer you work a thing the more possibilities you have of creating something.
It just comes through,
at least with my case it doesn’t come through uh,
divine touch, it just comes through just work.