David Herbert

David Herbert (born July 16, 1977) is an American sculptor. He remakes cultural icons such as Mickey Mouse, Superman and a VHS cassette.

Life

David Herbert was born in Seattle, Washington. He gained a B.F.A. from the Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle and an M.F.A. from Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond.

Art career Herbert worked initially with video, before changing to sculpture.

In July 2006, Herbert's VHS, a giant replica of a videocassete of 2001: A Space Odyssey was exhibited at Postmasters Gallery in New York City.

In December 2006, in The Bong Show at the Leslie Tonkonow Gallery in New York, Herbert's Creature from Bong Water Bog, was a green head with scales, twice life-size, open mouth and partially underwater in a glass tank.

In January 2007, his solo show, I (heart) New York, took place at the Postmasters Gallery in New York. Drawings included a depression era speaker and a burning flag with a KKK member. In 2008, in the show Amerika: Back to the Future at the Postmasters Gallery, he exhibited a foam-core model of the "Starship Enterprise", and also a depiction of Mickey Mouse—"retro-primitivist sculptures [which] reconfigure 20th century icons ... as crudely constructed stone-age totems".

In March 2009, his work appeared in the America festival Discover US! in Berlin, which presented 18 contemporary US artists. Herbert used American entertainment icons as a subject, transforming Superman into a skeletal figure of pain and Mickey Mouse into a feeble puppet, pointing to the reality behind the travesty of everyday life.

In June 2008, two works, Beautiful Superman and Western Model, were included in Freedom, the eleventh staging of The Hague Sculpture in The Hague, focusing that year on sculpture of American artists active since 1958. The exhibition took place in the Lange Voorhout avenue and was opened by the Mayor, Jozias van Aartsen; the theme of freedom was chosen for its particular association with the United States. Herbert was provided with accommodation and made his work in the Zijderveld studio in liaison with the carpentry workshop. Western Model is an object which fuses a wooden car with a house on top of it; and took as its starting point work by illustrators and animators to make "playful, mixed-media sculptures of architectural and pop cultural monuments in various states of deconstruction and dilapidation." He reconstructed out of chicken wire and spray foam a large version of Ridley Scott's alien, titled Monarch, showing the alien with a butterfly on its hand and sitting in a rocking chair. Herbert lives and works in New York. Saatchi Gallery Tacoma Art Museum