SANTA CRUZ DE TENERIFE, June 10. (EUROPE PRESS) –
TEA Tenerife Espacio de las Artes inaugurates this Friday, at 7:00 p.m., ‘Velar la forma’, by José Herrera (La Laguna, 1956).
The details of this new exhibition were announced by the island’s director of Culture of the Cabildo, Alejandro Krawietz; the artistic director of TEA, Gilberto González, and the author himself.
The exhibition – which can be visited for free until September 11 – goes through a careful selection of works of his research process over the last forty years, including some of the works that are in national museums such as the Patio Herreriano and the Reina Sofía Art Center.
Krawietz indicated that exhibitions like this make sense of an infrastructure like TEA.
“No one will question the symbolic and metaphorical capacity of José Herrera’s work,” he said, whom he described as “one of the leading artists in the contemporary art tradition at the national level.”
In his opinion, “the reflection of Herrera’s work has its contemporary space inside and outside the islands, in any territory”.
The insular director of Culture recognized that TEA is “happy” to have been able to start offering this work to the public and concluded his speech with congratulations and thanks to the assembly teams and all those who have been involved in hard work .
Gilberto González, for his part, stressed that “José Herrera is part of a generation in the Canary Islands in which many start from a position close to minimalism” and pointed out that in the specific case of Herrera “there are elements that can be reminiscent of his beginning, but from the first moment there is already a coherence in the elements, in the use of color, in the constant working method and there is never abandonment of those ideas”.
José Herrera was grateful for the work carried out by the TEA team and for Gilberto González for telling him that his work “could interest many people” and offering him these TEA spaces.
The artist recognized that “gathering work over a period of 40 years (1982-2022) is very exciting” and explained that ‘Velar la forma’ includes pieces that have never been seen in the Canary Islands.
“Seeing them after so long and making an exhibition with works that I have, that the TEA or the CAAM have, and being able to relate those pieces from different years enriches me a lot because of the openness that can occur from now on to the work that I can develop” added the artist.
This exhibition –the first retrospective dedicated to José Herrera– has not been planned in chronological terms, nor does it attempt to make the visitor understand a stylistic evolution as a mere transition from one medium to another.
Faithful to the way of perceiving her own work, she has tried to ensure that those who participate in it do so under the premise of a spatial experience just as Herrera has always worked.
‘Velar la forma’ will also feature a publication with texts by David Barro and Anatxu Zabalbeascoa.
THIRTY WORKS
This new exhibition proposal brings together some thirty works by José Herrera made between 1982 and 2022.
The creations of the artist from Tenerife stand out for their complexity, both in their elaboration and in the process that accompany them and that, however, the author always insists on hiding, collects a note from TEA.
His work has always been linked to the idea of silence and this is true, both in his vital attitude and in the way he makes forms manifest.
In this way, Herrera’s work confronts the visitor with a state of temporary suspension that forces him, at least for a moment, to abstract himself from the environmental and mental noise.
‘Velar la forma’ will be open from Tuesday to Friday, from 12:00 to 20:00, and on Saturdays, Sundays and holidays, from 10:00 to 20:00.
The exhibition includes works from the collections of the Bank of Spain, the Montemadrid Foundation, Oliva Arauna, the La Caixa Foundation, and the Atlantic Center for Modern Art. Cabildo of Gran Canaria, of BIBLI, of Jualpe, of the Reina Sofía National Art Center Museum (Madrid), of the Contemporary Art Collection Association-Patio Herreriano Museum (Valladolid) and of a private collection in Barcelona.
It also has an ephemeral intervention by the artist on the access ramp to the main entrance of the museum.
SHEETS AND CHAIRS
This consists of occupying a triangular surface with a total of 875 chairs and two sheets for each of them. The installation requires the collaboration of citizens with the contribution of two used and clean sheets per chair, which do not have elastics to be able to fold them carefully.
Those who wish to collaborate in this installation by delivering two sheets can do so by delivering their material to the TEA box office until July 8, from Tuesday to Friday from 12:00 to 8:00 p.m., and Saturdays and Sundays from 10:00 to 8:00 p.m.
The artist has made a specific drawing in India ink and with a pen, of which 875 serigraphs have been published, numbered and signed by the author and accompanied by a technical sheet. To each person or couple who delivers their two sheets, at the time of reception, the TEA staff will give them a serigraphy as a thank you.
José Herrera explained in his speech that the first idea was to place 2,010 laurel trees, but in the end it could not be and he had to opt for the option of sheets.
“Working with the memory of the sheets implies working with illness, suffering, love, sex, dreams, it seems beautiful to me and it is very important to me. The collaborators are considered co-authors together with the artist of this experience in the outside the center. The work will be worked on, according to the contributions, until reaching all the seats occupied. It is important that this transformation process be a living process, that has the imprint of the people who collaborate,” said the artist from La Laguna .
