This is the story of a globetrotter, of an explorer with sharp eyes and a sponge head, a creator who uses plastic to express himself and to complain about plastic, who, like other artists, shapes what he sees and feels into perennial art. This Argentinean is called Ezequiel Herrera (Buenos Aires, 1977), and he opens the doors of his workshop for us to get to know his work.
-How does your story begin?
-I was born and raised in Buenos Aires, after finishing school I studied Fine Arts and Architecture at the University of the City of La Plata. I wanted to practice drawing and since it was public and anyone could enter, I attended the fourth year classes that were drawing and had very good teachers and models, for example, there was Rocanbole, the artist who made the covers of the Argentine band Patricio Rey y Los Redonditos de Ricota. I did take architecture officially.
I recognize that I have had the pictorial ability, the sensibility to paint, since I was very young. I don’t remember but my mother told me that when I was 4 years old they called her from the nuns’ kindergarten where I was going to tell her that “it wasn’t worth it to help your son to draw, the purpose is that they can develop by themselves”, to which she answered that “she didn’t help me at all” and the nun showed her the drawing. It was a tree with details of the branches, the apples with their leaves, all very detailed. The reality is that she had that eye for detail and, while I think we are all draftsmen but some of us are more connected to that, it was clear that she had a hand for drawing.
After my studies I was in Europe doing very different things. I did exhibitions in Verona, in Naples, but always doing different things, all kinds of things, until a moment came when I started to dedicate myself only to art.
-It’s good to be able to make a living from art, you have to get to that point?
-Yes, but as in everything, the architect wants to build the house, but at the beginning you spend your life making plans. In everything with so much competition it is complicated, if now you want to be a chiromassage therapist there are millions, sowho can make a success of it?
It is true that art is not like making food buns, for many it is still a privilege to consume it, culturally, here at least.
-When did you arrive in Ibiza?
-10 years ago.
-How and why?
-I am now 48 years old and when I was 25 I married my wife, who is still my wife today, and we went to live abroad. England, Italy, Saudi Arabia, Costa Rica… we went to see the world, we did 37 countries, living in 6. I have a friend who lives here and I was going to Palestine to stick a poster on the wall and to see Israel as well. Andrés, my childhood friend, tells me to come and see him before I go to the Middle East. Talking, I tell him about my project to open a gallery in La Plata because it seemed that the situation of the country was very good, at the beginning of Kirchner’s government. But he started to tell me that it was not going to last, that I should not do it, that it was a bad idea. He told me “come to Ibiza to see me first”. Of course, he arrived and as soon as he picked me up from the airport he took me to a party in a beach house [risas]…
-It seems that Andresito made your bed [carcajadas]…
-But the following days I started going to Aguas Blancas, Salinas, cycling, and “let’s go to a yoga session, there is just a retreat”, and wherever you go there is always the sea nearby, which I love… and of course, I liked it very much. A year later we returned to live.
-What are you producing right now?
-Right now I’m working with recycling. When I lived in Italy we had our daughter and we consumed a lot of milk. And I would look at the tetrabriks and think that it could be used for something else. So I would open them and paint on the aluminum face. In all the trips we made, I took a lot of pictures, so I made a series of women’s faces, each one with her native beauty. But I painted them in the colors of their own atmospheres, for example, the woman of Madagascar where there are many rice plantations which is very green so everything is dyed green, so the woman of Madagascar I painted in shades of green. The Argentinean Pampas, yellow, etc.
Then in Ibiza I started directly with the plastic, and what I do is cut it into very small squares and build by stacking them on edge. I made a series of 30 pieces and luckily they all went away. But I also put natural elements in them, like pebbles, salt, bark, salt, earth… Then I went to s’Argamassa to swim a lot and one day I saw a lot of micro plastics in the sea, and of course, I had no way of catching them. And I thought, “here at some point it will be difficult to find the fish”, like looking for Wally… It came to my mind to make pieces stealing the toy fish from my daughter and in a sea of plastic this situation of finding Nemo. And I made several pieces, including SpongeBob, Patrick or Aquaman.
-Yes, you asked me “currently”, but in the past I used to paint hyperrealistic with a grosso Jorge Frasca, who later replaced the legendary Molina Campos. I was his assistant, cleaning his brushes at first, but then he saw a certain talent in me, so he let me paint backgrounds for him. I painted a lot of figurative, I painted a lot of the countryside and I learned that technique very well.
I also painted the dome of the cathedral of La Plata.
After that I started a series or project that I called “Arte Plafff”. Which is vindictive. It is a slap in the face. A series was very protest, and always taking care of the plastic part, there was a lot of calling attention to something in particular.
When cell phones first came out I painted a picture of a human head full of microchips for example.
But then I got involved with plastic and perhaps with my more bizarre and humorous side, because for example, I painted a butterfly with a paraglider. Or a penguin with a sweater where the sweater and the skis are made with plastic, because plastic surrounds everything natural.
I’ve also worked with hotels, but I’ve always wanted to get a message across, whatever the situation or client.
-How do you measure “I do what I know sells” versus “I do whatever I want”?
-I almost always did what I wanted to do, but I had to pay the bills. I had to find the formula to not hurt myself and not let myself down. To be able to make a product that is not stuck in people’s fingers because over the years you learn and you open up more, through things like group therapy for example, and you realize that imposition or a finger in the eye is not the way, that it is better to put the jocular and closer side to convey the message. With anger, calling people’s attention doesn’t work. But sometimes it sells more and sometimes it sells less, with Plafff Art in full coronavirus I sold only 7 pieces. But I am satisfied with the final product because I take care of the aesthetics and the message was born.
On the other hand, the tone of this series is very urban. When I lived in London I stopped painting figuratively. I went to all the museums that are free and there is culture everywhere, but what surprised me a lot is everything that happens in the street.
Late one night I was coming home and I saw a guy painting a wall next to what was a park that had been dismantled to make a parking lot and he was writing something like “no park, yes parking” and I think it was Banksy or a henchman of his. I was amazed by the street art in London. I also saw others using fire extinguishers filled with paint and using it to paint, it was all very interesting. That painting on the wall (he points to one in his living room) has a concrete wall because it came from Palestine and I liked the idea of a rebellious naked girl writing the word LOVE, which didn’t come out the way I wanted so I asked my daughter Catalina to write the word for me and I left it. When I came back I saw that she wrote the word and added a heart.
-Speaking of Banksy’s genius, what did you think when he turned on the shredder of a painting that was just sold at auction?
-A genius, the corporation he must have behind him of people thinking must be enormous. I don’t believe at this point that it’s just him.
-He multiplied the price in a second after the purchase, a masterful move and at the same time a prank, and a protest… a brutal combo.
-Yes, a genius, but even when he was less known, he sold very well. Nowadays it happens that you leave a pair of slippers in a museum and people take pictures of them [risas].
-Speaking of that, what did you think of the Italian artist Salvatore Garau who sold a transparent sculpture, that is, he gave you a base with a certificate that certifies that there is a transparent sculpture and that it was sold for 15,000 euros?
-Another genius. And in the eighties an artist put his shit in cans and sold them all as “artist shit” and there must still be people who have them [risas]. I wish I had thought of that! Art in the end is a concept. But that is made valid by the artist and his credentials and the art circuit that takes it for good because they eat from that.
-Yes, when I arrived in Ibiza and I was working in a stall in Las Dalias I thought of making cans with “Ibiza air”, more than anything as a souvenir and as a protest in some way that anything with the name IBIZA is sold. But it came to nothing, but then, someone did it! [risas] Do you agree with me that today there are pieces of what is known as contemporary art that are a joke?
-Yes, there are many things that are insults.
-The banana glued to a canvas with silver tape.
-Yes, it seems to me that in the world we live in, paying a million and some for a painting like that and eating it is disrespectful.
-Do you think the artist did it with conviction or did he jump into the pool to see if there is water?
-But at that level you can already “throw bananas” [risas].
But to be honest I wouldn’t do that as a protest, if it was a protest or a tease. I’m more of a Banksy kind of guy.
-What are your sales channels?
-I do samples mostly. Sometimes I do live painting but I am more conventional in terms of sales. I have also sold a lot in hotels. But I sell in Barcelona, in Ibiza and in Germany, for example, through gallery owners.
-Web?
It happened to me that my domain expired and one day I wanted to enter and I got balls [risas], it turned out that there is a soccer player with the same name as me. I’m pretty hung up on technology. Instagram is what I use the most. In the end that’s a job in itself.
-And where do you get the materials you use for your plafff art?
-I collaborate with an association called AMAE, which is quite big in Ibiza, and I participate in another one called Núcleo, which is very powerful, another type of people, and I also collaborate with the NGO Creative For the Planet, which works more oriented to the planet.
We recently did a work that is in the Santa Maria Institute, which is a 1×1 payesa made with 5,500 very small squares of plastic. They work a lot with institutes and at a more academic or pedagogical level. Then I also do things with an Italian industrial designer called Gianpaolo Passaretti from Plastic Lab, a super interesting total geek, where we grind all the caps (which are the best plastic) to make raw material. I get a lot of material from them.
-Don’t you get your hands on the yellow contender?
-Yes, I did, but it is forbidden, it turns out that they are private property and so taking things out of the containers is like stealing for the law. And then I wanted to go to the recycling points but they don’t want to give me anything because for them it’s a big trade and they want everything for themselves. It is a business.
-What samples do you have planned for 2025?
-One in September in Formentera that I already presented to the contest, and I’m always preparing things, I do not stop. I’m even expanding my workshop although I always end up in the salon [risas].
-Finally, I ask you about A.I., a recurring question, what do you think about allowing them to create art?
-Let him do what he wants… I’m not afraid, the same thing happened when the camera appeared and what’s going to happen with hyperrealist painters… and it evolves and that’s it. There are machines that can paint a mural, and when did wallpapering appear? A.I. needs a human mind to tell it what to do, it is not going to do it by itself.
-For the moment…
-It needs orders. And then it will have its value, which I consider to be always less than a work made by humans. But well, I’m talking about the time you and I are going to live, I’m not talking about the year 5000…
-Are you afraid of the future?
-No, I was scared when I saw Terminator. It makes me sad to think that in the future there will be so few trees or that my daughter won’t pluck an orange from a tree… in the future we will feed on pills, but of course, who can afford meat pills?
-Well, if there is a group of people who will rebel and resist against meat pills, it is the Argentines, without a doubt!
[carcajadas] We will never allow it!
