As a print-based studio artist, Jonathan Herrera Soto approaches printmaking as an act of love through the gesture of translation. He visually articulates relationships between collective memory and historical instances of state-sponsored violence inflicted on politicized bodies by constructing print-based work that echo the lived experiences of those who are no longer with us. The layered process of printmaking reckons with displacing information thereby rendering knowledge autonomous from its original confinements. By repositioning the subject in the world and in history, Herrera Soto constructs visual material from what is lost, creating presence out of disappearance. The print-based process, such as slicing open wounds into wood, burning the surface of lithostone with acid, and the crushing of ink on paper under immense pressure, re-animates the content by symbolically revealing the act of remembering in producing tracings and impressions.
Jonathan Herrera Soto graduated with a BFA from the Minneapolis College in Art and Design in 2017. Recent solo exhibitions of Herrera Soto’s work include “Always Tomorrow” at Brown University, “In Between / Underneath” at the Minneapolis Institute of Art, “Querida Presencia” at the Duluth Art Institute. He has participated in numerous artist residencies, some of which include Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Yaddo, Kala Art Institute, Santa Fe Art Institute, and Highpoint Center for Printmaking. His work has been featured in BOMB Magazine, Hyperallergic, among other publications. Herrera Soto is a recent recipient of the Jerome Hill Foundation Fellowship Grant (2019-2021), Brown University Artists Initiative Grant (2020), Metro Regional Arts Council Next Step Grant (2019), Santo Foundation Individual Artist Award (2018), Minnesota State Arts Board Artist Initiative Grant (2018), and is a current 2021 Paul and Daisy Soros Fellow.
Email: jonathanherrerastudio@gmail.com
Instagram: @produce.work
Please contact HAIR and NAILS Gallery in South Minneapolis for purchase inquiry