Georg Herold

Between the 80s and 90s, Herold's work was influenced by Albrecht Dürer's, whose Hare (1502) was created using roofing slats.

Herold was also influenced by the Dada movement, whose specifics are found in his Bizarre and subversive works that refer to the consumerist society.

Some of Herold's works are often "allusional" and "quirky and provocative as "Dada"".

Georg Herold (born 1947) is a German artist.

He works in sculpture, installation, painting, photography, and video art.

He lives and works in Cologne, Germany.

Herold finalized a traineeship as an artist blacksmith and attended the University of Art and Design Halle (Halle, Germany) from 1969 to 1973.

They formed a tight knit group of "provocateurs", the "bad boy group" (enfants terribles), known for embracing the punk attitude and rebelling in the anarchic spirit of the late 1970s.

In 1974, Herold left the German Democratic Republic, went to Munich and attended the Academy of Fine Arts (1974–76).

Harold left Munich and went to Hamburg where, under the mentoring of Sigmar Polke, he has graduated the University of Fine Arts.

While studying under the guidance of Sigmar Polke (1977-1981) and Franz Erhard Walther at the University of Fine Arts of Hamburg, Herold met Günther Förg, Martin Kippenberger, Albert Oehlen and Werner Büttner.

Since 1980, DOCUMENTA IX has been hosting Herold's artworks, including There is nothing left—There is no right (1992)

Herold uses non-traditional mediums, lower grade everyday materials that are not commonly used in art.

These include construction materials like bricks, matresses, nails, socks, buttons, paper scraps and copper making Herold's work to be associated sometimes with Arte Povera.

He also uses eclectic household and food items, like tights, aged cheese, tea strainers, photos, and various plants, thus, transforming the role of canvas by changing it into a support that outspreads "from the frame into the picture".

One of the examples of the nontraditional art materials that Herold uses may be his caviar paintings.

As Herold smears caviar across the surface of the canvas, he transmutes the value and connotation into something invested rather than wasted.

Herold, through his frequently ironic critical works, makes an allusion to figures of authority, the art market, their artistic predecessors, and the prevailing culture questioning the whole purpose of art and even its context in the world at large.

A sculpture composed of metal wire and wood, Genetischer Eingriff in die Erbmasse bei Frau Herold (n.n. tr. The Genetic Alteration of Mrs. Herolds DNA) (1985) depicts a DNA double-helix constructed from wire that descends from thin air to a wooden base.

As it approaches the base, chunks of board wood of various lengths seem to interact with, interrupt, and distort the DNA strand at random.

Some of Herold's works include: G.O.E.L.R.O (1988), Hospitalismus (1989), The Bow (1989), Untitled (1990), Resteuropa (Rest of Europe) (1998), Rumsfeld (2004), Red Square (2005), Platz des himmlischen Friedens (2005), Lost in Tolerance (2006), Flamingo (2007).

All these artworks are sculptures or installations made of bricks, canvas, laths, color lacquer and screws.

Since 1989, Herold has been created abstract figures made of Beluga caviar, a sort of abstract expressionism like the Untitled series (1991-).

He also portrayed different personalities like Mike Tyson, Bertrand Russell, Lionel Richie, William Burroughs, Sean Penn, Barry White, Charles de Gaulle Mark Lombardi and, he even has counted the number of fish eggs used for creating some of his caviar paintings.

Herold's sculpturing style is accepted as minimalism or Neo-Dada minimalism by art critiques, galleries and journalists.

Herold's sculpted figures often are slightly distorted, filiforms, stretched to the point of breaking, often reaching towards something, pushing their body postures, while trapped in an unbearable state.

Herold's large canvas Untitled (1991) displays four dark, spiraling patterns made of Beluga caviar.

The spirals resemble DNA molecules, and each caviar egg is painstakingly numbered.

Punning on the political left and right wings, There is Nothing Left, There is No Right (1992) consists of two doors, each painted a neutral gray.

One of them is marked "There is nothing left," the other emblazoned "There is no right."

Viewers are invited to choose.

In Knstlerische Medizin, Patho-Ontologie (Cabinet patho-psychologique) (1995), Herold presents a collection of glass bottles and jars, each one labeled in a way that at a glance seems scientific and legitimate.

Closer inspection reveals the label texts to be pseudoscientific and satirical.

An example is Herold's Herrenperspektive (Men's Perspective), (2002).

The ironic tendency of Herold's works which leave room for interpretation, juxtaposed to the fact that he uses commonly found objects to create his artwork, influenced his style towards Marcel Duchamp's approach.

Delivering the WOW (2005) is a plain linen canvas, from which protrude several unremarkable stacks of bricks, joined from end to end with white cement to create tall, narrow towers three bricks high.

With his sculpture series, Figur I-V (2007), Herold presents five larger-than-life surrealistic human figures composed of canvas stretched over lengths of timber, vibrantly tinted in solid primary colors with glossy auto-body paint.

Slender and angular, long-limbed and lacking in facial features, these figures writhe and contort into arresting body positions, as if in extreme pain or ecstasy.

For Members Only depicts a big cardboard box, with the words of the title scrawled on its side, evoking a child's imaginary fort.

This plain setpiece is raised high above the viewer on a splendid pedestal, solid and transparent, placing access to the cardboard fortress out of the viewer's reach.