The cover image for this issue of Artkrush is a detail of a still from Pure Sublimation, a 2000-2001 video by Oliver Herring. Herring suited, painted, and wigged a group of strangers in Crayola colors and unleashed them on an urban obstacle course. The performers loop, climb, and enter slip-covered cars in what could be a dance, but looks like an impromptu gymnastics routine. Like Herring's other videos, Pure Sublimation is a goofy meditation on the mundane.

German by birth, Herring received a BFA from the University of Oxford in 1988 and his MFA from Hunter College in 1991. He currently lives and works in Brooklyn, New York, where he also finds many of his project participants. Represented by Max Protetch, Herring has had solo shows at the Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim Museum, and the New Museum of Contemporary Art.

The artist first garnered attention with his unusual Mylar weavings, which took shape as transparent casts of people, clothing, and furniture. Knit in isolation for years at a time, the ethereal sculptures also pass as process and performance works. After ten years of plastic, Herring started translating his hermetic daydreams into videos noted for their stop-motion cinematography, humor, and dream-like structures. In one early video, the low-tech Exit, Herring flies off his knitting chair into imaginary jungle landscapes. 2001's Little Dances of Misfortunes consists of five dark screens containing fluorescent-streaked strangers, each embroiled in purposeless movement; a woman rolls a green ball with her head, and a circle of legs rotates in space. The disjointed stills arrive slowly, adding a Chaplin-esque charm to each physical play. Herring now knits video frames instead of Mylar, but his is still an eclectic and unexpected art. (LM)