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“Being Latin American, you are made up of so many fragments from different cultures,” says Arturo Herrera. For the Venezuela-born artist, collage is the natural expression of his mixed identity. Herrera’s collages combine cartoon elements with abstract shapes to explore the interplay of childhood memories and adult desires.
In his Berlin studio, he photographs elements of his own drawings and then develops the film canisters in various liquids, which seep in and alter the film. “I think there is a potential for these images to communicate different things to different viewers in a very touching way,” he explains. “But that experience is not a public experience, it is very private, and very personal.”
More information and creditsCredits
Created by: Susan Sollins & Susan Dowling. Executive Producer & Curator: Susan Sollins. Series Producer: Eve-Laure Moros Ortega. Associate Producer: Migs Wright. Assistant Curator: Wesley Miller. Production Manager: Alice Bertoni. Production Coordinator: Kelly Shindler. Producer: Charles Atlas. Editor: Lizzie Donahue. Host: Grant Hill. Director of Photography: Jim Barham, Terry Doe, Mead Hunt, Tom Hurwitz, Eddie Marritz, & Joel Shapiro. Sound: Leigh Crisp, Les Honess, Mark Mandler, Roger Phenix, Gary Silver, Merce Williams, & Richard Yeats. Assistant Camera: Craig Feldman, Andrew Heikkila, Brian Hwang, Steve Nealey, Kipjaz Savoie, & Trent Wittenbach. Production Assistant: Justin Leitstein. Assistant Avid Editors: Robert Achs, Jamie Courville, Sean Frechette, Mike Heffron, David Kreger, Cara Leroy O’Connell, Joaquin Perez, Aaron Sheddrick, &
Lynn True. Still Photography: Alice Bertoni.
Creative Consultant: Ed Sherin. Art Design & Animation: Open, New York. On-Line Editor: Don Wyllie & Frame:Runner NYC. Composer: Peter Foley. Voice-Over Artist: Jace Alexander. Sound Editing: Margaret Crimmins, Greg Smith, & Dog Bark Sound. Sound Mix: Tony Volante & Sound Lounge. Animation Stand: Frank Ferrigno & Frame:Runner NYC. Introductory Host Segments Created by: INTERspectacular. Commissioned Video Art by: Teresa Hubbard / Alexander Birchler.
Artworks Courtesy of: Ellen Gallagher; Arturo Hererra; Oliver Herring; Jessica Stockholder; Blaffer Gallery, Houston; Edgar Cleijne; Gagosian Gallery, New York; Gorney Bravin + Lee, New York; Max Protetch, New York; Mitchell-Innes & Nash, New York; Brent Sikkema, New York; & Two Palms Press, New York.
Special Thanks: The Art21 Board of Trustees; Maria Baptista; Jeff Bechtel; Josie Browne; Centro Galego de Arte Contemporánea, Spain; Cherie Greer; Curious Pictures; Kim Davenport; Dieu Donné Papermill; Julie Gannon; Jay Gorney; Leta Grzan; Andrea Hall; Michael Jenkins; David Lasry; Sheri Pasquarella; Rice University Art Gallery; Natasha Roje; Soundtrack F/T; Terrie Sultan; Ttweak; University of Central Florida; Dona Warner; & The Yale Center for Media Initiatives.
Director of Education & Outreach: Jessica Hamlin. Director of Development: Kathi Pavlick. Development Associate: Sara Simonson.
Interns: Susan Agliata, Nathan Townes-Anderson, Hannah Blumenthal, Agnes Bolt, Lisa Charde, Mary Chou, Kate Crawford, Amanda Donnan, Sophie Dunoyer de Segonzac, Suzy Foster, Jules Gaffney, Katie Hen, Heather Hughes, Adam Krakowski, Georgia Kung, David Mark Kupperberg, Maiko Kyogoku, Phil Logan, Lisa Margulies, Michelle Maydanchik, Carla Meyers, Christine Miller, Geoffrey Pan, Sujay Pandit, Jihan Robinson, Jennifer Sarkilahti, Megan Scally, Karen Seapker, Greg Shilling, Sarah Sliwa, Jennifer Smith, & Elizabeth Swift.
Public Relations: Kelly & Salerno Communications. Station Relations: De Shields Associates, Inc. Legal Counsel: Albert Gottesman. Bookkeeper: Marea Alverio-Chaveco & William Handy.
Major underwriting for Season 3 of Art in the Twenty-First Century is provided by National Endowment for the Arts, PBS, Agnes Gund and Daniel Shapiro, Nathan Cummings Foundation, Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Jon and Mary Shirley Foundation, Bagley Wright Fund Bloomberg, The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation, JPMorgan Chase, Melva Bucksbaum and Raymond Learsy, The Paul G. Allen Family Foundation, and The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.
Closed captionsAvailable in English, German, Romanian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Italian
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Interested in showing this film in an exhibition or public screening? To license this video please visit Licensing & Reproduction.
Arturo Herrera’s work includes collage, works on paper, sculpture, relief, wall painting, photography, and felt wall hangings. His work taps into the viewer’s unconscious—often intertwining fragments of cartoon characters with abstract shapes and partially obscured images that evoke memory and recollection. Using techniques of fragmentation, splicing, and re-contextualization, Herrera’s work is provocative and open-ended. For his collages, he uses found images from cartoons, coloring books, and fairy tales, combining fragments of Disney-like characters with violent and sexual imagery to make work that borders between figuration and abstraction and subverts the innocence of cartoon referents with a darker psychology.
“I think there is a potential for these images to communicate different things to different viewers in a very touching way. But that experience is not a public experience, it is very private, and very personal.”
Arturo Herrera
Arturo Herrera
Arturo Herrera
Arturo Herrera
Artist at Work
