The ‘objectness’ implied in Cuban artist Carmen Herrera’s early paintings is realized in an ongoing series of three-dimensional works she has collectively titled Estructuras (Structures). Begun in the late 1960s these Estructuras were based on paintings that were ‘really crying out to become sculpture,’ as she says. Angulo Rojo, an A-shaped aluminum armature covered with bold red acrylic paint, is the first new structure Herrera has designed in over ten years. Embracing an approach that is at once meditative and reflective, graphic and abstract, Herrera’s work evokes a simultaneous sense of instability and order. Recalling the chevron and diamond forms in a number of painted works by the artist, Angulo Rojo is a dynamic composition that conveys movement and rhythm through a careful geometric balance, teetering between the solidity of a three-dimensional, sculptural object and the weightlessness of an ethereal shape lifting off the ground. Rather than deploying tricks to fool the eye, however, Herrera’s intent is to sharpen our perception. ‘There is nothing I love more than to make a straight line. How can I explain it? It’s the beginning of all structures really.’
