Artist Biography

Eric Blum (b. 1956, California) was educated at UCLA, and St Martin’s College of Art and Design in London. Blum’s layered arrangements of ink-washed, wax-infused silk are rooted in modern painting techniques, yet activated by the experimental manipulation of his media. While initially drawing inspiration from the world around him, Blum dives into his work blindly, putting his materials through a process of layering, rotating, covering, and uncovering, until he settles the elements into a visual anagram; no longer resembling his own preconception. The ambiguity of Blum’s references and the elusiveness of his narrative are beguiling. Its parts don’t always go together, and when viewed anew it becomes something other than itself. Creating work that is more desirable, poetic or preposterous than when it began.

Blum’s work has been exhibited at galleries and institutions across the nation including, Knoxville Art Museum, the Transamerica Pyramid Gallery, Museum of Contemporary Art, Boulder, CO, Kresge Art Museum at Michigan State University, Contemporary Art Center, Cincinnati, OH, Montclair Art Museum, Montclair, NJ, and the Albright Knox in Buffalo, NY to name a few. Blum received the New York Foundation for the Arts award in 2008 and The Pollock-Krasner Foundation Award in 1998 and 2001. Eric Blum currently lives and works between New York, NY and Los Angles, CA.

Artist Statement

“Seeing without looking expands the possibilities of interpretation.  A thing viewed peripherally or in the background can be felt as something other than itself; something potentially more desirable, poetic or preposterous.  It mixes up parts that don’t always go together.  It courts the edges of recognition.  Its unpredictability suits my innate passivity.

As in an anagram, one makes use of the limitations of its elements.  My approach is to limit choice by initially dictating the guidelines, but then permitting the forms to settle into something foreign; no longer resembling my own preconceived ideas.”