Arturo Herrara in "Play" - Season 3 - "Art in the Twenty-First Century" | Art21

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.