Oliver Herring is a visual artist known for his use of experimental techniques as a means to better understand human nature, individual behavior, and inter personal dynamics. His first solo exhibition in 1993 at the New Museum in New York featured hand knit Mylar and tape sculptures made in response to the loss of one of Herring’s artistic heroes, playwright and drag performer Ethyl Eichelberger. These sculptural works transcend gender associations in exquisite forms that express mortality, the body, loss, absence, and refuge.
Herring’s creative practice later evolved to include videos, performances, drawings, three-dimensional photographic sculptures, and choreography. Many of these works focus on brief yet intensive collaborative encounters with volunteer participants. The resulting works not only record these impromptu activities, but also reveal the poignancy implicit in strangers exploring their vulnerabilities and embracing trust.
Over the last twenty-two years Herring pioneered TASK - a simple performance structure that manifests itself as an ongoing series of parties and workshops. TASK has become established as not only as a happening for the art world but as an educational tool in schools at all grade levels, and as a social icebreaker. Performed all over the world, TASK has also taken place in partnership with the National Art Educators Association; Turnaround Arts, (an initiative of the President’s Committee for the Arts and the Humanities); the school district of Melbourne, Australia; and Art21. A book on TASK was published in 2009 by Illinois State University.
Herring’s work is in the collections of many major institutions, and has been exhibited widely nationally and internationally, including the Museum of Modern Art, NY; the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum of Art, NY; the Whitney Museum of Art, NY; Performa 09, NY; the Hirschhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC; the Baltimore Museum of Art, MD; The Frye Art Museum, Seattle, WA, etc. He has also exhibited at the Camden Art Center, London; Victoria and Albert Museum, London; Kyoto Art Center, Kyoto; He Xiangning Art Museum, Shenzhen; A4 Art Museum, Chengdu; McAM, Shanghai; Xth Lyon Biennale, Lyon; Performa 09, NY; 2010 Aichi Triennale, Nagoya, and so on. Me Us Them, a fifteen-year survey of Herring’s work, was organized in 2009 at the Tang Museum, Saratoga Springs, NY. Herring was also featured on Season 3 of PBS’s program Art21, Art in the 21st Century, and serves on Art21’s board of directors.