Combining a Surrealist's interest in the unconscious with a postmodern sensibility, Herrera creates evocative collage drawings that are distinctively psychically charged. These amorphous works are typically composed from cut fragments from children’s coloring books or comic illustrations, and often incorporate Disney characters and other recognizable cartoon icons. In A Knock Herrera uses his cut-and-paste technique to achieve a perfect balance between figuration and abstraction. For this work he has cut out fragments of figures based on the Disney characters Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs from a collaged, candy-colored background. The disjointed figures are not immediately recognizable and only emerge from clues within the flowing, linear web of paper strips: a hand holding a candle, a pickax, the tassel of a cap, fragments of clothing, and pieces of arms and legs. Images that are normally considered innocent and innocuous are placed in illogical juxtapositions, resulting in a morphed entity composed of multiple body parts. Herrera has created a nightmarish world in which childhood innocence has been subsumed by the unconscious.
Publication excerpt from The Museum of Modern Art, MoMA Highlights since 1980, New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 2007, p. 240.
