This fall McColl Center for Art + Innovation presents sculptor Joseph Herscher’s first solo exhibition in the United States. Herscher, a self-taught kinetic artist whose work has been viewed by over 10 million viewers on YouTube, uses familiar objects in unfamiliar ways to create surrealist landscapes comprised of a series of chain reactions. Inspired by Pulitzer-Prize-winning cartoonist Rube Goldberg’s absurd and elaborate inventions, Herscher employs principals of physics and engineering as well creative wit and humor to create highly complicated and convoluted devices that perform simple, energy-saving tasks in elaborately wasteful ways.
Herscher’s project at McColl Center for Art + Innovation is held in conjunction with his two-and-a-half month residency at the Center during which he will transform the Center’s first floor public gallery into a working factory/studio where he will create The Dresser, an extremely elaborate kinetic sculpture. Visitors to the Center will have the opportunity to witness Herscher’s construction of The Dresser and interact with him from the start of his residency to the finish which culminates on Saturday November 9, 2013 from 1 – 5 pm with five live performances sure to delight and intrigue audiences.
In 2008, Herscher, a former computer software programmer, created a 3-minute video of an apartment spanning chain-reaction machine. Soon after Crème That Egg received 2.6 million You Tube views, Hersher started appearing on talk shows in his native New Zealand, designing machines for corporate functions and public spaces across Europe, and presenting workshops for youth world-wide. He was featured in the 2011 Venice Biennial where he organized 40 children to create a Goldbergian plant-watering device in the Venice Giardini. Other exhibitions include: Impetus and Movement, Ars Electronica, Berlin, Germany and Machines, Quebec City Biennial, Quebec City, Canada. His work has also been featured in print, television and film around the world including features in The New York Times both in print and online, The Huffington Post, New Yorker On-line and, most recently, on an episode of Sesame Street with Murray the Muppet.
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