Oliver Herring at Max Protetch

Oliver Herring, sculptor, videomaker, performer, expert knitter, photographer and who knows what else, wisely resisted overkill in his recent exhibition at Protetch. His new video and photo-based sculptures, given ample space to breathe, marked a new synthesis for this artist, whose willingness to challenge convention has produced work of exceptional originality.

The centerpieces of Herring's show, his sixth with the gallery, were two life-size portrait sculptures made from polystyrene and covered with thousands of photo-fragments depicting the body parts and clothes of his subjects. Resting on the floor, encased in plastic vitrines, the figures, named for their real-life counterparts, Patrick and Gloria, were silent testimonies to Herring's prowess as a craftsman as well as a seducer.

Patrick and Gloria, a young man and woman from Herring's Brooklyn neighborhood, were persuaded to sit for several sessions, separately, while the artist sculpted them in the polystyrene and photographed every inch of their bodies (Gloria in a flowery dress, Patrick in undershorts). Herring then cut up the photos and affixed the pieces to their proper places on the three-dimensional form, resulting in sculpted facsimiles that were at once hyperreal and otherworldly. While recalling the extensive photographing of Warhol and Hockney, and their multiplying and fracturing of images as well, Herring's sculptures are equally rich and essentially more complex. His disassembling of the photograph and obsessive compounding of it serve as a direct assault upon conventional moving and still images, yet the very use of the medium by a sculptor is also an homage. His treating of image as sculptural surface is very new.

Unidentified young folks were featured in a series of photographs that crisscrossed the long west wall of the gallery to form the installation Do Two Monologues Make a Dialogue? Captured at home in various states of dress and undress, they obviously enjoyed Herring's attention. The unrehearsed photos (two women together and one man alone) met on the wall, somehow suggesting a multiscreen digital video seen one frame at a time. The young man is also the subject of Birdseye View of the Theatre Below, another fractured sculpture made from cut photos, here mounted on foamcore. Viewers look down on the sliced image of the man, which is shaped to look like an amphitheatre, complete with steps and a performance area. The curves of the body coupled with the three-dimensionality of the sculpture suggest the lushness of Caravaggio's rendering of young men, which is itself intensely sensual in an almost photographic way.

The video Trucks played on a small plasma screen suspended from the ceiling in the front of the gallery. Through the simple magic of Herring's customary stop-action manual editing, big, colorful trucks appear to dance to Aram Khachaturian's waltz music as they dump dirt on an arena floor in preparation for some unspecified event. In common with his earlier videos, including The Sum and Its Parts (2000), Little Dances of Misfortunes (2001) and Sleepless Nights (2001), Herring uses a light touch to create beauty and humor out of everyday movements. Fundamentally, Herring's use of sculpture, photography, video--even the knit Mylar of his earlier work--is merely a means to a deeper connection with the person, and his interactions function as his primary material.

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