Viewing Arturo Herrera: From This Day Forward at Thomas Dane Gallery

Born in Venezuela in 1959, Arturo Herrera is celebrated for his cartoonish collages, felt sculptures and wall paintings that fuse popular cultural imagery, historical source material and elements of abstraction. ‘I am attracted to juxtaposing invented images and readymade images without establishing explicit relations between elements,’ he once said.

This brilliant show, his fourth at Thomas Dane Gallery, brings together new works, immersive wall painting and bookmaking shaped by the lived constraints of isolation. Central to the exhibition is the fine line mural that spans the gallery walls, echoing elements from Herrera’s 2020 hand-made book From this day Forward. It also includes several of his distinctive collages composed of photographic fragments, vibrant figurative strokes, animation and cultural and historical references that chart his continued investigations into modernist legacies and layering.

What strikes is his desire to distort meaning: ‘Can I make something so clear ambiguous? Can I uproot it?’, he asks. His work, particularly his collage, straddles that fluid border between legibility and abstraction — and is all the more entrancing for it.