Sikkema Jenkins & Co. is pleased to present an exhibition of new works by Arturo Herrera, his sixth solo show at the gallery, on view from January 29th through March 5.

In the new works on paper and large scale wall painting featured in the exhibition, Herrera insists on the validity of fragmentation as a mode for an impure kind of abstraction. Working with a multiplicity of disconnected references, the artist delves into a complex dialogue between visceral fragments and a palpable totality, both pregnant with a variety of meanings. Specific objects uprooted from popular culture are still recognizable but are no longer the sole protagonists of images where an underlying structure reveals a restless and throbbing space on the verge of shattering itself. All the works display a tactile quality that reinforces the dynamic struggle between referentiality and the desire for a concrete reality, a need for closure that is ultimately out of reach. Shifting between being legible and abstract, the collages juxtapose a myriad of cut-out and painted elements into a wholeness that is continually in flux and without hierarchy. Inviting and resisting dissection, all the works in the exhibition reexamine abstraction as a contaminated idiom that keeps on transforming itself.

Arturo Herrera’s work has been exhibited throughout the United States and Europe in numerous group and solo exhibitions. He has had recent solo exhibitions at Haus am Waldsee, in Berlin, Germany (2010); Galleria Franco Noero in Torino, Italy (2009); and Sala TAC in Caracas, Venezuela (2009). On February 3rd, a solo exhibition by Arturo Herrera will open at the Americas Society located at 680 Park Avenue in New York. The installation, titled Les Noces (The Wedding), incorporates Igor Stravinsky’s 1923 score of the same name and digitally altered fragments of the artist’s works into an ever-shifting dance of abstract black and white images. The exhibition will also feature works on paper, sculptures, and a series of 80 photographs. More information at www.americas-society.org.

Herrera was born in Caracas, Venezuela. He lives and works in Berlin.