The Introducing Series is an initiative that creates a platform for emerging artists to be formally introduced by an advocate of their art and future career. Twice a month a new artist will be presented by their champion and will have an exemplary piece of work exhibited at The Window at 125.

 Nora Herting

In collaboration with Jared VanDeusen

Introduced by Sarah Walko

The Window at 125: Introducing Nora Herting from Roger Smith Hotel on Vimeo.

 In 1918, at the height of his artistic career, Marcel Duchamp took up chess.  When he returned to Paris from The United States in 1923 he was no longer a practicing artist, remarking that chess “is much purer than art in its social position”.

Chess is a process built on binary oppositions, as Duchamp regarded art as an equally cerebral experience. Despite Duchamp’s peers difficulty in understanding this bridge between art and chess, the problem of cross over was nonexistent to Duchamp. When asked to explain this apparent contradictory association, Duchamp’s response was, “There is no solution, because there is no problem.” By blending the fundamental opposition in chess; black and white squares, the new grey ground of the chessboard becomes the aesthetic space where no problems and no solutions exists.

In the Window at 125 is the chess set Duchamp designed, but never completed. In Duchamp’s design the colors are correlative to the chess pieces and chess set visually reveals the mechanics of the game through color theory. This is a demonstration of the influence of chess on Duchamps art.

“I was first introduced to Nora Herting’s work in the Triangle Artists’ Workshop in 2006. Her work intrigued me immediately because she did a series where she invited people to the space to photograph them “sleeping” on a bed she had installed in her studio. Last year Nora and I co-wrote an essay on a series she completed titled Free Sitting, where she went undercover to execute the work by being hired as a trade photographer at a portrait studio in a JC Penney department store in Ohio. Herting is not just photography based, such as a community garden project she organized and curated involving a dozen artists over a three month period. Herting’s use of community involvement, community disruption, and her consistent critique of both the art world and social constructs within culture, from the family to other social groupings, is what intrigues me about the work. I find all of her work symphonic in the sense that it has a wide spectrum of how it can be approached and digested from any perspective the viewer is coming from. It is often funny or beautiful but its investigations and concepts touch on resonating ideas, important and often uncomfortable concepts. I find all of her work ultimately subtle yet lasting. I knew when inviting her to do a piece for the Window at 125 she would take the context and the program  into consideration and the execution of the piece would be unique.”

–Sarah Walko

For a decade Nora Herting has been involved in a tumultuous relationship with photography that has included affairs with sound, video, and performance. In the past she has found herself hovering with a giant camera over people’s beds, cooing madly at shriveled infants during a reconnaissance mission as a JcPenney portrait photographer. She holds a MFA from The Ohio State University, and BFA in Photography from the University of New Mexico. She lives and works in Brooklyn.

Jared VanDeusen’s artistic approach synthesizes his background in physics, architecture and philosophy. His practice includes intuition, existential thought, street art, and chess tactics. Recently, he built a laser throwing Mars Rover and a biocart to grow opium poppies as part of Tom Sach’s month long installation,the Space Program, at the Park Armory. VanDeusen studied Architecture at California Polytechnic and Physics at SUNY Oneonta.

Sarah Walko is a multimedia sculptor/installation/film artist and writer. She is currently the executive director of Triangle Arts Association.  El Cadaver Exquisito, an experimental documentary collaboration film she worked on with director Victor Ruano and Rossemberg Rivas, is currently in festival circuits. Her fiction and non fiction essays have been published by While Whale Review Literary Journal and Hyperallergic Art Blog where she is a regular contributing writer.  Her visual artwork has been published by The Dirty Goat, Redivider, Blood Lotus, Apple Valley Review, 2 River, A Capella Zoo, Awosting Alchemy, 5◊5 Literary Magazine, Bathhouse, Cincinnati Review and Host Publications. Her latest exhibition Preternatural was at the Museum of Nature, a science and nature museum in Canada in 2011- 2012. She has participated in several artists residency programs including IPark and Artworks in Johnstown, shows frequently in group exhibitions in New York and recently was  an artist in residence at the Elizabeth Foundation in New York. She is currently working on new sculpture/installations and book and film projects.

This piece will occupy The Window at 125 from September 15-30^th 2012

To accompany the work in the window space, a celebration of each artist and the formal introduction will take place in the form of a conversation between the champion and artist. They are posted in its entirety every two weeks on rogersmithlife.com. For more information visit www.rogersmithlife.com or email Danika Druttman at danika@rogersmith.com.