Arturo Herrera’s work sometimes functions like an artistic Rorschach test, especially when he embeds imagery from popular culture into monochromatic fields of beautifully chaotic, cut paper. Untitled combines cartoon figures with elements of gestural abstraction. While at first glance it appears to have no subject, upon closer inspection imaginings from Walt Disney’s iconic 1937 film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs appear. Bits of cartoon flora and fauna, and fragments of dwarfs and Snow White herself slowly emerge from a labyrinth of green paint. This appropriation of Disney animation creates an unconscious connection that helps make sense of the abstract forms in the painting. About this type of viewing experience, Herrera states, “The challenge is, how can an image so recognizable, like a dwarf, or a cartoon character’s foot or nose, or the red and blue specific to Snow White’s dress, have another meaning that I impose onto it? Is it possible? Can I make something so clear ambiguous? Can I uproot it? In which ways is the baggage that we bring to the new image relevant to the vivid recollections within our cultural context?”

Label from Arturo Herrera: Little Bits of Modernism, December 12, 2014–April 5, 2015