Sunday, January 16, 2011

Garden Grove Creative Community

Click here for a video from the play at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles

Three Tall Men group show-Erik Bluhm, Paul Gellman, Peter Harawik at Space 1520, Los Angeles


Erik Bluhm with Untitled (totem with rubble)


Erik Bluhm, 6'3" is the shortest in the group of Three Tall Men. "I'm not sure if the show will invite folks to question height," he shares, "but maybe there's something in the scale of the work that will address that..." For this show at Gallery Space, Bluhm constructed two large-scale collages and two life-size sculptures.

Bluhm's sculptures explore mythology and the human form. An inanimate figure is tucked in a hand-sewn sleeping bag. Close by lays a shrine at the foot of a mighty god-like form. Meanwhile, Bluhm's collages are formal, emphasizing color and shape. Thin strips of colored paper are arranged geometrically, taking on the effect of a woven rug. The canvases, one in a warm color palette, the other cool, are seemingly contentless, but small, encoded image outlines, text and symbols - broken circles and disconnected lines, the letter "M," the numbers "173" remove the collages even further from reality.

In conjunction with the Three Tall Men show, a special screening of a New Energy Encounter Group video will be held inside Gallery Space, tomorrow, October 21st from 7 - 9 pm. New Energy Encounter Group is an ongoing collaboration between Bluhm, Gellman and friends. Click here for event details.




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Erik Bluhm is an artist, writer and deejay born and raised in Los Angles. He has shown at David Patton Los Angeles, Las Cienegas Projects, Atelier Cardenas Ballanger Gallery, Paris, and Hiromi Yoshi Gallery, Tokyo. He is the co-founder of the New Energy Encounter Group, a troupe of actors, musicians, and artists that have performed at the Hammer Museum, Orange County Museum of Art, and Sundown Salon.