BELIEVING his art is accessible to every person, American experimental artist Oliver Herring invited visitors to a performance of his art at the He Xiangning Art Museum on Saturday encouraging them to ask particular questions so that he could better communicate with them.

    “Through my work, I want to demythologize the art process and make my art accessible to everyone,” said Herring, who was born in Germany in 1964, but now lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.

    Herring is one of 14 American artists involved in The Logic of Paper — American Paper Works, which opened Saturday, continuing until Feb. 20.

    Using paper as the basic thread, the exhibition introduces the 14 American artists’ paper works, such as prints, drawings, photographic images, videos, installations, and performance art.

    “The exhibition is designed to serve as a platform where American artists can share their ideas and creativity with Chinese artists and audiences because most of them were exhibiting in China for the first time,” said the exhibition’s curator Chen Xiaowen, a Chinese artist and professor at the Alfred University School of Art and Design in New York.

    Five artists, including Herring, Diana Cooper, Elisabeth Haly Meyer, Joseph Scheer, Peter Krashes, attended the exhibition’s opening ceremony Saturday.

    Herring painstakingly cut and pasted photographs which he had taken of two young models from all angles. The photographs were pasted onto the models, who were wearing only underwear, standing in the center of a second-floor exhibition hall.

    On the walls were hung a series of photographs and videos documenting some of his recent works.

    Since 1998, Herring has created stop-motion videos and participatory performances with “off-the-street” strangers. He makes sets for his videos and performances with minimal means and materials, recycling elements from one artwork to the next.

    In a series of large photographs, Herring documents strangers’ faces after hours of spitting colorful food dye, recording a moment of exhaustion and intensity that doubles as a form of abstract painting.