| Vertical Painting: Arturo
Herrera
Party for Tom
November 19, 2000 for long-term
installation
(November 17, 2000) -- On November 19, 2000, P.S.1
Contemporary Art Center presents Party for Tom by Venezuelan-born artist Arturo
Herrera (b.1959). This work, located in P.S.1’s stairwell A on the 3rd
floor, is the latest addition to the Vertical Paintings series initiated with
P.S.1’s reopening in 1997. Herrera’s project continues the tradition of
installing art in unconventional spaces throughout the building that has characterized
P.S.1 since its first exhibition in 1976.
While Vertical Paintings at P.S.1 have until now
been created for the walls of P.S.1’s stairwells, Herrera chooses instead to create a
work for the ceiling of the third floor. Party for Tom will suggest something
specific to the viewer — an image from a movie or a cartoon character, yet this
painting remains visually ambivalent and without a defined reference. A playful and
colorful shape that recalls the paw of an animal appears to penetrate the old school
staircase from outside and to be held suspended by ropes. The work is fleetingly
experienced in the passageway by viewers in motion as they ascend or descend the stairs.
Party for Tom relates to the wall paintings
that Herrera has made since his first billboard project in Chicago, IL in 1994. A critical
relationship to the ways in which people move through different architectural spaces is
the basis for his colorful semi-abstract and rhythmic works. They also bring a digital
sensibility into real space combined with an interest in morphing and hybrid shapes.
Herrera’s wall paintings develop out of small collages of fragments from coloring
books, cartoons, images from popular culture, and painting, which have been realized in
on-going series since the early 1990s. In 1998, Herrera exhibited these collages and other
related works at the Art Institute of Chicago and the Renaissance Society of the
University of Chicago.
Herrera has created felt pieces since 1998 and they share
the large scale of his wall paintings and suggest a liquid, tactile and sensual
development beyond modernist abstraction. They were first shown in 1999 at Brent
Sikkema/Wooster Gardens Gallery in New York, Stephen Friedman Gallery in London, and the
Istanbul Biennial. Earlier this year, his felt painting was shown in Greater New York at
P.S.1. Herrera has recently participated in ArtPace artists’ residency program.
Organized by P.S.1 Senior Curator, Carolyn
Christov-Bakargiev, this wall painting continues P.S.1's series of large-scale
"Vertical" works set in the many stairwells of P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center.
This series of works called Vertical Paintings was initiated by P.S.1 Director
Alanna Heiss in 1997. Currently on view in other stairwells are Vertical Paintings
by William Kentridge, Cecily Brown, and Alexis Rockman, among others.
This Special Project is made possible in part by the Jerome
Foundation and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs. |
