One of five new films from Art21’s spring/summer 2019 programming

Can horror also comfort us? Returning to their childhood home in Bayville, New York, on Long Island, Dan Herschlein works on a series of four plaster reliefs, titled Night Pictures, for a show at JTT Gallery in Manhattan. Herschlein’s unsettling sculptures of headless figures, backlit windows, and lonely suburban tableaus evoke darkness and fear as a means toward emotional understanding. Herschlein recalls the feelings of aloneness and alienation that growing up in their hometown evoked, channeling those emotions into the work and explaining their interest in the voyeur as “somebody who feels outside of the equation.”

Temporarily working in their parents’ den, Herschlein makes molds of parts of his body and sculpts headless, scarecrow-like figures in white plaster. Mounted on wood and then painted black, the figures are partially lit by single flashlight beams, inspired by Herschlein’s childhood practice of illuminating cutout images in his bedroom window. The resulting reliefs are eerie and uncanny yet surprisingly tender: figures lined up against a fence grasp each others’ hands as they peer into a home; an upside-down torso is peeled open to reveal a room and a window with drapes. The headless figures become metaphors for self-reflection. “A big mission of mine is re-evaluating maleness and masculinity,” Herschlein explains. “The ability of men to bury their emotions to the point where they can’t even find them is unparalleled. If I can look at that at face value, maybe it’s fine to be scared or sad or anxious; it’s not such a threat.”