Arturo Herrera; Schloss, 2009
Schloss is an unusual work for Arturo Herrera, who is known primarily for large and small scale collage as well as murals, minimalist sculpture and drawings that reference Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.
In mid-2009, while browsing in a Berlin flea market, he came upon a book on the fine art of pastry decoration published in 1925 containing numerous colour plates depicting outrageous cakes and ridiculously imaginative decorative elements. Edible objects as diverse as a turkish bedroom slipper made of marzipan to small cakes with the shape and coloring of roast chickens. Herrera knew that he wanted to work with these images but rather than going in a familiar direction such as collage, he chose to make interventions using black ink applied with pen and brush. The variety of these interventions ranges from a few subtle lines and marks to large black and grey ink washes that al but obscure the formal presentation of the pastry.
