It’s never too late to step up your game. Arturo Herrera could have continued with his essentially one-trick-pony career, exemplified by large droopy wall pieces in thick felt with cutout shapes based on Walt Disney characters — that you could see if you were so informed.
But in his first New York gallery show in almost four years, Mr. Herrera has expanded beyond fashionable, pop-culture-inflected inscrutability, heading into riskier terrain that is more personal and experiential. Basically, it’s form over concept in these layered, disorienting amalgams of painting, collage and assemblage — whose origins, it should be noted, include the juxtapositions in David Salle’s paintings.
In Mr. Herrera’s smallish hybrids, the cutout felt continues and one recurring excision might even be a bunny from “Snow White.” But now the holes often reveal additional layers of felt splashed with paint and sandwiched with sheets of silk-screened aluminum, fabric tote bags and other textiles, and occasionally books dipped in paint.
You have to really explore the different materials, processes and previous lives, while parsing the tensions between physical fact and visual effect. This applies to relatively simple pieces like “Untitled (Munich),” where the paint jumps between two layers of dark felt, and busier ones, like “Untitled (Liebe),” with its kaleidoscopic slices of thrift-shop paintings, or “Untitled (Red/Blue Hamburger),” which repeats the possible bunny shape.
Don’t overlook the “oil studies” on found books and their stunning, miniaturized bravura. Mr. Herrera’s efforts are not all good, and at times they feel a little formulaic, but altogether this is a very heartening show, both for Mr. Herrera and art in general.