Nick Hernan: Open Studio at the Locker Plant
The Chinati Foundation is pleased to invite the community to a reception and exhibition of work by Artist in Residence Nick Herman at the Locker Plant on Thursday, April 28, 2011 from 6:00 until 8:00 PM.
Nick Herman is a Los Angeles-based artist, writer and editor who has been working in Marfa since early March. Herman makes sculpture, photographs, prints, paintings and books. He is also an editor and graphic designer, and his work explores the relationship between formal structural vocabularies and the natural and manmade landscape. Often situated in the world of myth yet essentially of the body, Herman’s work combines a variety of traditional as well as “found” materials with hand-made techniques and a ironist’s dry wit.
A black and white, photographic, lunar-like landscape, is actually a sculpted frieze surprisingly made from fat solids. In his words, this type of work “explores how material metaphors conflate the desire for peace and prosperity with cliché and often grotesque depictions of abundance.” In another series of works carefully hand-tied nets in various colors and sizes transform these utilitarian forms into works with subtle and poignant properties—they hang and droop, revealing their human inconsistencies.
White on white collage works have impasto-like surfaces; close examination might discover eroticized figures lurking just below. Herman’s exhibition will also feature a group of roughly formed carcass or bone shapes made from white plaster, each inserted with a device traditionally used for calling animals. There is a dark humor in these juxtapositions, part art and part science experiment. Even useless data such as the white noise or pictorial properties of television static becomes a subject worthy of contemplation.
Herman has exhibited at the Sculpture Center, Socrates Sculpture Park, and Peter Blum Gallery in New York. His work was a part of Portugal Arte (Lisbon) and he will have a solo project at LA >< ART in summer, 2011. Herman has an MFA in sculpture from Yale University and a BA in religious studies from Macalester College. He is also the publisher of ANTEPROJECTS.