Artist: Pedro Herrero Ferrán
Exhibition title: Low Flight
Venue: CIBRIÁN, San Sebastian, Spain
Date: March 11 – May 7, 2022
Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and CIBRIÁN, San Sebastian
Low Flight is Pedro Herrero Ferrán’s first solo exhibition at Cibrián. Presenting a series of new works, including sculptures and assemblages, this exhibition highlights Herrero Ferrán’s continued interest in dissecting relics of outdated systems of coercion.
Herrero Ferrán’s practice combines various gestures and objects appropriated from specific disciplines such as aeronautics, and cartography. His approach to sculpture is also influenced by the use of open -source software, programming code which can be accessed and manipulated by anyone. By deliberately misusing the collective knowledge made available on these public platforms, Herrero Ferrán produces new and ambiguous forms which no longer support their intended function.
In Low Flight, the viewer is first confronted with what appear to be disused serial objects: eroded plane carcasses littering the floor, drawing desks hanging from the walls, polyurethane resin reproductions of desk lamps, etc. These objects, and forms recall outdated forms of authority laid to waste. The artist uses different standardized sets of instructions as a vehicle for artistic expression.
Herrero Ferrán often refers to the figure of the thief, a character emblematic of the same deceptive mutability found in the artist’s work. A thief is a kind of professional amateur who maintains indistinctness by finding precise tools that allow for his or her erasure. A similar challenge faces the artist in a context of contemporary global art production, where ideas and forms are continuously stolen, and identity has become a key issue for many artists. Low Flight operates from this tension, using the splendor of academic rigidity as a means to an end.
The works on display can be seen as the relics of institutions that bear the subtle mark of a more intimate presence. The artist, as if he were a clumsy thief anxious to sign his misdeeds, left many traces behind him. All these personal references work as a kind of automatic writing in the margins of school books, a space that escapes surveillance.
