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 been created for the walls of P.S.1’s stairwells until now, Herrera chooses to create a work for the ceiling of the third floor stairwell. 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 experienced fleetingly 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. The basis for his colorful semi-abstract and rhythmic works is the understanding of a critical relationship between the ways in which people move through different architectural spaces. 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.