March 30, 2008

“Estructuras”, ArtNexus,No. 68, 2008, Reviews

Carmen Herrera - latincollector, New York

By GRACIELA KARTOFEL - “Estructuras” (Structures) was a very appropriate title for Carmen Herrera’s recent exhibit at Latin collector. Herrera works with minimalist abstraction and color constructions. She creates tensions and intensifies these through the use of saturated colors. Here, the conception of the work is related to how its parts come together. Herrera’s work does not reveal the application of paint, and she employs a large format that includes the spectator to a certain degree. In these reliefs, volumes exist in dialogue, accentuated by empty intersections, which are generally delicate diagonals that divide the works. These clear works are the products of an artist who has lived for nearly a century (she was born in 1915) and who has witnessed and participated in the many movements that took place during the twentieth century.

Although this exhibit comprised a modest group of five works, it was powerful nonetheless. The five pieces were well accompanied by other works on display on the shelves in the open gallery office. The artist created a large number of drawings from which the current sculptures emerged; the five large pieces presented were created between 1971 and 2007. Herrera’s spirit was reflected in the intensity of colors, and tensions. Her works were rather minimalist and acknowledged geometry and the important Brazilian Neo-Concrete movement. Even within her stylistic parameters, Herrera conveyed the expressive intensity of Latin–American artists in her work.

Always drawn to sculpture and to the abstract representation of mundane elements, Herrera creates conceptual art in a spontaneous fashion. From her initial to later abstract periods, several approaches followed. In Herrera’s work from the second half of the twentieth century (in light of Abstract Expressionism and two post war periods), graphic, industrial, and architectural designs were legible; these fed off the visual arts and vice versa. This fraternity expanded to the cinema, dance, and theatre. The period known as Primary Structures began to appear as loose and rugged geometric forms on the floor that supported form and color without being visual anecdotes.

The works of Carmen Herrera are not Primary Structures but are closely related to that period; they are asymmetrical reliefs set on walls. They are neither kinetic nor at rest because the parts that compose them create tension. The viewer sees Herrera’s intention to balance the compositions as well as more impulsive qualities. Untitled (2007) is one hexagonal piece created with black acrylic (100×100 centimeters, or 40×60 inches); three sides are straight, and the other three radiate dynamic diagonals that visually propel the relief. Herrera sometimes uses black to counteract white: yellow, red, orange, blue, and green are also within her palette.

Carmen Herrera lived for long periods of time in her native Cuba, in New York, and in Paris; in 1954, she returned to New York to settle there permanently. She studied drawing, painting, sculpture, and began studies in architecture. Although she did not finish her studies in that discipline, architecture is nevertheless in her work. Notwithstanding the several group and individual exhibits that have featured her work, she is better known by specialists than by the general public. Her work of the last twenty years is minimalist, concrete, geometric, and clearly understood and appreciated at many levels. In 2004, Herrera took part in an important exhibit organized by the Latincollector gallery entitled “Concrete Realities: Carmen Herrera, Fanny Sanín, Mira Schendel.” Herrera has gone through the well–know personal negotiations and postponements to become acknowledged in recent years as part of Latin American art in New York. She is present at nearly all of her important exhibits, such as the Pinta Art Show (the first Latin American art fair in Miami) and “New Perspectives in Latin-American Art, 1930-2006: Sections From a Decade of Acquisitions” curated by Luis Peréz-Oramas at the MoMa in New York.