SEATTLE, WA.-Working across the mediums of performance, photography, sculpture, and video, Oliver Herring’s art has long been poised between the activities of taking and making. Herring is among a select group of contemporary artists rigorously exploring the dynamic relationship between photography and sculpture. Central to Taking and Making, mounted in Viewpoint Gallery, is Oliver (2005) a new photo-sculptural self-portrait—begun as an image (taken) of its subject, it developed into a sculptural object (made) of thousands of photographic fragments.

The method of making has always been central to the meaning of Herring’s work. Trained as a painter, Herring first gained international attention with his beautifully elegiac sculpture series, A Flower for Ethyl Eichelberger: an Ongoing Project (1991-1994). These larger-than- life (“queensize”) coats, blankets, and other objects of shelter and comfort, knitted in silver Mylar and clear plastic tape, honored the memory of the drag performer and Wigstock legend whose 1990 suicide shook alternative culture beyond her New York home.

Performance remains central to Herring’s practice. Like the process of knitting, and the combining/layering/multiplying of photographic fragments into a sculptural whole, these performances are generative and cumulative. Video has played multiple roles in Herring’s conceptual framework: as sketches that generate sculpture, as counterparts to photo-sculptural works, and as ends in themselves. Included in Taking and Making is the most dramatic and painterly of Herring’s video works, Little Dances of Misfortune (2002). Simple task-like actions—walking, climbing, diving and falling— are performed to a syncopated soundtrack. The performances, recorded in a very dark studio, are made visible only by light reflecting on phosphorescent paint applied to props and performers.

Oliver Herring, born in Germany, received his BFA in Painting from the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art at Oxford and his MFA from Hunter College. He has exhibited internationally and his work is included in many private and public collections. He lives and works in New York City, where he is represented by Max Protetch Gallery.

The Frye Art Museum is committed to engaging audiences, challenging perceptions, and encouraging dialogue about the shifting notion of representational art. The work of this prodigious and innovative artist expands this exploration; the Museum is honored to host Herring’s first solo exhibition in the Northwest.