Colleen herman

A longed-for bed

December 12, 2023 - February 2, 2024

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"Within the celebration of the erotic in all our endeavors, my work becomes a conscious decision: a longed-for bed which I enter gratefully and from which I rise up empowered. For the erotic is not a question only of what we do; it is a question of how acutely and fully we can feel in the doing.” 

– Audre Lorde, The Uses of the Erotic, The Erotic as Power

Olympia is pleased to present A longed-for bed, a site-specific installation of eleven paintings on canvas by Colleen Herman. It is Herman’s first solo show with the gallery. 

For the exhibition, Herman found inspiration in Audre Lorde’s 1978 speech at Mount Holyoke College, The Uses of the Erotic, The Erotic as Power; the audio recording and ideas being a foundation and hymn for the new works. Herman explores flora and its connections to femininity and sex, death and life cycles, growth and repose, by creating an arrangement of paintings that echo the unfolding of a film strip – a sequential and temporal format that visualizes Lorde’s speech being listened to, dialogued with, questioned, played and replayed in the studio. 

Multitudes are elsewhere regarded within art history; artists like Giorgio Morandi, Andy Warhol, and Laura Owens interrogate their own continuities and repetitions met with subtle or sharp differences. Rather than summoning the notion of continuity as visually traceable, Herman pivots by expanding herself across each surface with physical agility — edging towards playful curiosity, connecting to the erotic as a resource, towards an internal sense of satisfaction, which, “Once we have experienced it, we know we can aspire” (Lorde). 

Reading as handwriting composed in a letter (False Belief, 2023) or the rhythms of speech and sound (Wet Gold, 2023), the intimacy to be found in Herman’s marks and washes of paint channels the nonverbal; the feelings, tensions, and harmonies of the erotic world. Revelation and A Well of Replenishing, both 2023, might suggest parts of the flower’s center core, rousing and erupting. With Red Bouquet and Natura Morte, both 2023, Herman investigates new spheres of possibility by focusing on the richness of a single hue. Either all seen in unison or one by one, an electric charge rushes across the room, creating an environment that celebrates both a private awakening and a collective place of rest.

To honor the legacy of Audre Lorde a donation will be made to The Audre Lorde Project at the close of this show. The Audre Lorde Project is a Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Two Spirit, Trans and Gender Non Conforming People of Color center for community organizing, focusing on the New York City area. Through mobilization, education and capacity-building, they work for community wellness and progressive social and economic justice.

Colleen Herman (b. 1982, Baltimore, MD) is an artist who works with polychromatic multimedia on natural surfaces. Herman earned a BFA from Syracuse University in 2004. She has held three solo exhibitions at Sarah Brook Gallery, in Los Angeles and participated in group shows at The Hole, Los Angeles, Zurcher Gallery, New York, Lovaas Projects, Munich, Germany, La Señora Gallery, Oaxaca, Mexico, and others. This is her first solo show at Olympia, New York. Herman’s work is collected internationally and held in discerning private institutions. She has completed two residencies in Oaxaca, Mexico at pocoapoco in 2018 and 2019, and one in March 2022 at Casa Balandra in Mallorca, Spain. Herman currently lives and works in New York City.