Arturo Herrera: Assistant Jeff Bechtel

Powerful Images

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In his Berlin studio, Arturo Herrera discusses his relationship to creating abstract collages and images. Herrera takes the process of abstraction a step further by photographing fragments of his collages, such as in the work "Untitled" (2005), a series of 80 black and white photographs. He submerges the undeveloped film in hot and cold water, coffee, and tea, creating unpredictable results when printed. Editing the photos into a grid of images, Herrera creates a work that‘s greater than it‘s individual parts. For Arturo Herrera, abstraction is a language rooted in the practice of assembling and composing fragments. Herrera collects illustrated books, comics, and paint-by-number paintings, cutting and splicing them into new forms. He also creates his own source material by fragmenting drawings, watercolors, and shapes made by applying paint directly from the tube. Herrera collages all of these elements together, pasting them together to create a new whole. VIDEO | Producer: Wesley Miller and Nick Ravich. Interview: Susan Sollins. Camera & Sound: Terry Doe and Leigh Crisp. Editor: Jenny Chiurco. Artwork Courtesy: Arturo Herrera.
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Art21 first featured artist Arturo Herrera in 2005
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Watch the original & uncut 13 minute film online! (via Hulu)

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Own Season 3 Today: DVD or iTunes
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Arturo Herrera is featured in the Art21 episode "Play" along with fellow artists Ellen Gallagher, Oliver Herring, and Jessica Stockholder. The Season 3 DVD features 4 episodes, 18 artists, and is available from PBS and Amazon.

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The Hipster Handbook
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This irreverent guide to all things "hipster" was illustrated by Jeff Bechtel.

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I'm Yours Now
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Arturo Herrera included a work by Jeff Bechtel in an exhibition he curated—I'm Yours Now—at Sikkema Jenkins & Co. Gallery in 2006.

Jeff Bechtel
Acted-Out Misfortunes, 2006
Acrylic paint, spray paint, charcoal, 155 1/2 x 393 inches

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All I Ask
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This black-and-white line drawing in Herrera's studio is one of several abstract compositions the artist has based off of cartoons from Walt Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937).

Arturo Herrera All I Ask, 1999 Latex on wall, dimensions variable Installation view Württembergischer Kunstverein, Stuggart, Germany Collection Rachel and Jean-Pierre Lehman

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The History of X-ACTO Blades
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Did you know....

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Powerful Images
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Arturo Herrera's assistant Jeff Bechtel describes the process for translating one of the artist's complex drawings into a refined monochromatic paper collage. Filmed in Herrera's New York studio, Bechtel discusses how cartoon sources and stock imagery become abstracted into larger systems.

Arturo Herrera’s work includes collage, work on paper, sculpture, relief, wall painting, photography, and felt wall-hangings. Rooted in the history of abstraction, Herrera’s playful work taps into the viewer’’s unconscious, often intertwining fragments of cartoon characters with cut-out shapes and partially obscured images that evoke memory and recollection.

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00:00:14 Arturo has a set data bank of images that he pulls from, see all the scraps that he uses and what I am working on now is more of a smaller detail

00:00:25 of some of the larger systems that he's mapped out. They are mostly abstract. You see little details that you can pick out and recognize.

00:00:35 You might see a knot on a tree or part of a hand. It’s very, very ambiguous. I just do the monkey work basically.

00:00:46 It’s not part of the process that he needs to be involved with. A majority of the processes are very laborious.

00:00:55 They can take several months may be for a complex drawing. The process is fairly simple. Arturo obviously creates the drawing

00:01:05 and we paint on one side of it. The drawing is on the reverse side and then I use an Exacto blade to cutout that exact shape and it must be the exact shape.

00:01:16 It has to resemble the curves of animated cartoons and then I burnish the edges, so it’s completely flat and you just see color, that's then attached to a museum board.

00:01:29 You are not left with looking at it as a process. You only see the line and the color and you are no longer thinking about the hand of the artist; it's completely removed

00:01:38 and your just impacted by the reality and the sensation of this colored image.

00:01:49 Arturo is constantly busy at his table. He starts with stock imagery and he ends up with these creations that honestly I don’t know how; it’s just hours and hours of work. I don’t know how he ends up

00:01:59 at the places that he arrives, but that’s part of the astonishing aspect of his work.