ALCHEMY

Pedro Herrera's new works .

By Rafael Marcelo Arteaga

NINFA-DELIRANTE-DE-LOS SUENOS

If we accept the rhetorical art professor's theory, who is convinced that everybody has his own vision of the world, we would then also to be agreed with the existence of so many worlds as alive beings on earth. Similar to the creation methods; although, in that unknown territory there is a common denominator: our fears above all as much as it escapes to the domain of the reason.

Simple questions as who we are or toward where we are going it will always be a reason to begin the search. And it is not death what scares us, but the mystery that it contains. like the darkness, or our ideas of being eternal. It is not the silence we worry about, but the absence of words; we cannot decipher our time and we look for an answer, illuminating those world of shades, such if we had a lantern in our hands, in order to capture the images of our dreams.


This way, the medieval artists, convinced with their paints about the risks of the pleasure and they used the fear to move away the faithful of the sin; but, how do not enjoy today and -at the same time- terrify us the chaotic and refined world of Hieronymus Bosch with his triptych Delights Garden, or Death's victory by Bruegel, The Old.

Holocaust premonitions are not new.

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CLONACION-DE-LA-FORMA

Here it is Pedro Herrera's atelier. Guilty swords of deaths and betrayals, old picture cameras; books whose names we have forgotten. Old gods masks, an endless key collections close to objects and more things that justify the owner's existence.

Whoever enters here, it is as reading a chapter of the Divine Comedy, when Virgilio guides to Dante into the purgatory: you return your head and realize that your teacher disappeared. There is not coming back. You are alone in those hidden worlds outside of the paradise, in those mental jails that it retain us caught in darkness. Here begins the creation's pleasure.

-I am the atelier's spirit -. Pedro invokes, before crossing the threshold, and at once another voice answerer's from inside: - I am the the light. Come and liberate me. Outside the city rests and the fog, same as a beggar in the streets, enjoys the delight of walking in silence. Love, then, as a wild animal hidden between the mirror and the water, jumps into the eyes of anyone!


Everything is movement in the solitude, as at the beginning of the universe. There is not fear to death, it is an approach to it, an attraction to the mystery, whose doors open up and close behind us.

Pedro's work is not the photographic click, it is the mental process toward the image of our collective dreams, whose origin is perhaps in the tombs of old Egypt -or even more. It is a prophecy to be completed for us. And there is not cruelty in them, but a kind of an infantile obscenity, in an unavoidable way, we lost forever.

He is a creator amid the chaos generated by us. As in the old towns of Europe, he is sometimes magician, alchemist, astrologer. His images, more than surrealist, are fantastic, in territories populated with identical beings to us, full with daily details, prejudices and repressions: the representation of the modern hell, with all our pleasures and weaknesses, at the time where we are indoctrinated to be happy, although there are hecatombs.

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Here are his new works , ready to go to conquer the world, as in the train station, a foreigner, close to his baggage and without return ticket, is waiting for the arrival of the next train. He baptized them with a medieval name which contains the whole mystery of the creation: ALCHEMY. Los Angeles were the first scale, last November; then Sydney, New York, Mexico...

You, the one who still dazzle the mystery of the light and the shades, ignore the signs on the way road to arrive here. Captive of the colors and of the dreams, as a hungry wolves in the mountain, this territory is a challenge to the dynamics of the reason, the fascinating travel to death and its exploration, only guided by the passion of creating.

-I want to be the supreme one in visual arts!-, Pedro admits in a flare of euphoria. - I look for an own and at the same time for an universal style. It is water and it is light, it is a torrent of images whose spirit has its origin in the chaotic world of dreams.

And he returns to his teachers to reinforce his way: Bosch, Dillon Redone and his Dreams and Death, Ives Tanguy: The imaginary numbers, Indefinite Divisibility. Joan Miro, Rufino Tamayo, Dali ... names and names so fantastic as surrealist, like their works.

-I live and I sleep with images,- he affirms in front of his paints-. I conjugate work methods as the trocaje, the drawing, some images I make in sculpture, - he adds, satisfied of having given one more step ahead in his big projects. The camera of pictures is more an element inside his life, not less than the old books, the wine or the visits of friends in his atelier.

LUZ EN EL DESIERTO

I ask him, why in our country nobody risk to talk about him, even he is very known. -"We always wait that somebody from outside discovers the world for us"-, he answers, without paying attention to my words.

-"It is good because he says it; but not here for our people. I work for the time! Time is the mystery of the creation!"- He adds. Nevertheless, in 2004 Los Angeles city declared him illustrious guest, with the keys of the city in his hands! He is member of the artists council in this city, the Arts Academy of Long Beach studies his works; Joaquin Sabina admires him, Luis Eduardo Aute, during a concert in Spain, proclaimed him as brilliant. His pictures were transformed into posters and are selling now in Australia and North America.

-"My dreams are too big as to fit here", Pedro concludes. And in his answer there is not resentment some, but rather a challenge.

The challenge is outlined. Enter into the splendid world of his works and you will find the unsatisfied passion that provokes them.