Let the Lover Be, Eric Blum, ink, silk and beeswax on panel, 59 x 47 inches, 2013
Eric Blum: New Work March 7-30th, 2013
Artist Reception: Thursday, March 7th 5-7 pm
K. Imperial Fine Art is pleased to announce New Work, an exhibit of recent works by New York City based artist Eric Blum. This show, Blum’s first solo exhibit with K. Imperial, will feature a series of ethereal process-heavy paintings with ink, silk and beeswax on panel and a grouping of frenetic ink drawings on paper.
Blum’s sensorial investigations in light, line and gesture harken back to early memories of spectacle and the associations of those moments evoked on his infant consciousness. His paintings, while abstract in the formal sense, infer situations and narratives just below the surface. There is a self-referential layering or feedback of imagery in Blum’s process. He begins with individual drawings of ballpoint pen on paper, and montages these images together, layer by layer. The result is a densely tactile surface that nods to an impermeable psychological dialog between the work and its maker. It is the in-between space, however, or rather the pause between these semi-transparent layers of ink and wax infused silk, that eludes the mind as a sensation just beyond our peripheral vision. Blum refers to this illusory transaction between the brain and the eye as “misunderstandings of the irretrievable glimpse.”
Of Blum’s drawings, which are catalysts for the paintings and individual works of their own merit, there is a restless physicality and an acute sense of movement. The conscious action of line is met with contiguous marks, unself-conscious and raw, against a wide margin of the floating white of the page. Blum seems to have understood Richard Serra statement, “drawing is a verb.”
Blum was born in Fresno, California and educated at UCLA and at St Martin’s College of Art and Design in London. His work has been shown broadly at galleries and institutions across the nation including, Knoxville Art Museum, the TransAmerica Pyramid Gallery, Museum of Contemporary Art—Boulder, Kresge Art Museum at Michigan State University, Contemporary Art Center–Cincinnati, Montclair Art Museum in New Jersey and the Albright Knox in Buffalo, New York. A select list of his solo exhibition venues include David Weinberg in Chicago, William Turner Gallery in Los Angeles, and Rule Gallery in Denver. Blum received the New York Foundation for the Arts award in 2008 and The Pollock-Krasner Foundation Award in 2001 and in 1998.
K Imperial Fine Art is located at 49 Geary Street on the 4th floor. The artist reception for New Work will be held on Thursday, March 7th from 5- 7 pm.
For more information on Eric Blum or to inquire about the work, please contact the gallery at (415) 277-7230 or aimee (at) kimperialfineart (dot) com .
