William Carlos Williams, one of the great American poets of the last century, left behind one of the most important artistic maxims of all time, “No ideas but in things.”
During an era rife with idea-based art, we often find ourselves contemplating objects which have little presence on their own; they rely instead upon the artist’s own contextual exegesis – and personal charisma – to transmit significance. In the case of German-born, New York-based Oliver Herring, whose recent works are currently on display at the Frye, we find this phenomenon occurring with varying degrees of severity.
Only Herring’s Oliver -- a life-size self-portrait sculpture comprised of photographic fragments cut and spliced together – manages to arrest our attention. The texture of fabric, flesh, and hair is glossy and flattened, but something stirs from within the Polystyrene. The act of self-imagining or self-creation -- suggested by the exhibition’s title, Taking and Making – is conveyed on its own.
The work, at once life-like and disjointed in its meticulous construction, brought to mind Wallace Stevens' “The Man with the Blue Guitar”:
I cannot bring a world quite round,
Although I patch it as I can.
Unfortunately, Herring does not achieve this same effect with the other, less focused works that surround it. Among these are his five-channel, synchronized DVD installation Little Dances of Misfortune. As jarring as it might be to see video at the Frye for the first time, the sensation quickly dissipates upon closer inspection. Set to his own Baroque music remix, the dark monitors reveal fading, stop-action human forms that diminish first into spent bones, then mere shadows. While the movement has a Swankmeyer-like furtiveness, the tone of the piece is too mild to suggest action or evoke contemplation.
Less compelling still are his Do Two Monologues Make a Dialogue? and Dans La Cour Vitree Task Performance Documentation. The first is an intersection of two series of unframed snapshot-sized photographs each documenting the life of a more or less random individual. The second is a collection of photographs that highlight one of his “task” performances. These are gatherings in which groups of strangers are given and ultimately give each other fun, challenging, or mundane assignments to carry out. The objective is collaborative creation, but for Herring the more important outcome is each participant’s understanding of him or herself as someone daily involved in the act of creating.
When he was in town last month, the artist spoke with a subdued passion about both the process and result of these works. Well-spoken and physically appealing, he made a persuasive case for them. On there own, however, they conveyed little of the electricity he claimed to have experienced in their making.
Many of the younger, critically-acclaimed artists who have visited Seattle recently (Ellen Gallagher, Trisha Donnelly, Doug Aitken, etc.) have shown themselves to possess the kind of brains, looks, and personal charm that would enable them to succeeded in any field of their choosing. They can be so persuasive, in fact, I have often needed to go back and reevaluate my response to their work just to make sure I’ve not somehow been had.
While Herring could no doubt hold his own with them in conversation, his work – unlike theirs – does not quite hold up without him.
