From 12th of September at 18:30 until 29th of October
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Supernova invites you on the 12th of September at 18:30 to the opening of Arturo Herrera’s personal exhibition “Fare un giro”, curated by Allegra Pesenti.
Arturo Herrera
Fare un giro
Curated by Allegra Pesenti
Arturo Herrera applies modernist strategies of fragmentation and repetition in work that confronts the legacy of abstraction with the art of collage. For ‘Fare un giro’, the artist has chosen to activate the Supernova space on Piazza di S. Maria in Trastevere in Rome with a focused selection of serial and individual works that combine past and present, and emphasize the physicality of materials both within and around the works themselves.
The subtle juxtaposition of realities in Herrera’s visual language are drawn from his extraordinary archive of found imagery. Two series on view for the first time in this exhibition were produced during the artist’s residency at the American Academy in Rome between September and November, 2023. ‘Fare un giro’, which translates loosely to ‘going for a wander,’ references Italian sites and cities in a presentation that is specific to space and place. Within the installation, photographic reproductions of ancient statuary and Etruscan tombs collide with a magnified image of the Gazzetta dello Sport – the daily newspaper with sports coverage that is instantly recognizable for its pink pages and has the largest readership in Italy.
Herrera’s works span from miniature to monumental, and from flat surfaces in traditional collages to dimensional sculptural compositions and assemblages. Found objects are incorporated into his forms in works such as ‘Bang and Untitled’, a large monochromatic sheet of cut felt that falls from the wall. “There is an interplay between the found object and its link to everyday cultural sources that reflects the contaminated aspect of today‘s abstraction” explains Herrera.
A stand-apart element of the installation at Supernova is the wallpaper of a forest that represents a more anonymous and transportive state. This encompassing scene proposes a pause within the urban and cultural environments on the artist’s giro. “The visitor is invited to take his or her own tour into the artist’s constructed compositions that propose layered readings and associations” says curator Allegra Pesenti, “in a body of work that redefines the nature and impact of the collage form.” Fare un giro is Arturo Herrera’s first and long awaited exhibition in Rome.
A limited edition postcard by Arturo Herrera is available for purchase at Supernova, with the proceeds going to the local Community of Sant’Egidio.
ARTIST BIOGRAPHY
Arturo Herrera was born in Caracas, Venezuela in 1959. Over the last 20 years, he has developed an internationally celebrated and multi-layered body of work which spans from collages and felt sculpture to large-scaled public commissions and wall paintings. Herrera’s art straddles between figuration and abstraction and is notable for the positioning of found images within ambiguous contexts.
Herrera’s work is featured in the collections of acclaimed institutions world-wide including San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco CA; Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Chicago IL; Museum of Modern Art, New York NY; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York NY; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles CA; Tate Modern, London UK; Staatliche Museen zu Berlin – Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin, Germany; and Museo Reina Sofia, Madrid. His work appeared in the 2002 Whitney Biennial, and has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions, the most recent of which was You are here, Site Santa Fe, NM (2024). He has been the recipient of many awards including a Deutscher Akademischer Austausch Dienst (DAAD) Fellowship and The Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship. In 2023, Herrera was the Deenie Yudell Resident in the Visual Arts at the American Academy in Rome. He currently lives and works in Berlin.
CURATOR’S BIOGRAPHY
A native of Milan, Allegra Pesenti received her PhD from the Courtauld Institute of Art in London and specialised in the study of works on paper. She joined the drawings department of the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles in 1999, and the Grunwald Center for Graphic Arts at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles in 2007. Allegra was hired as Chief Curator of the Menil Drawing Institute in Houston in 2013, and she re-joined the Hammer Museum as associate director and senior curator in 2016. She currently works as an independent curator based in Rome.