Blum & Poe

Since 2012, Kristoffer Gansing has worked as the artistic director of transmediale—a festival at the forefront of digital media and culture that analyses the current moment through self-reflection and anticipation of rapidly oscillating futures. Explorations into moving image, online culture, and the socio-political landscape of digital...

As Taipei Dangdai returns for its second edition between 17 and 19 January 2020 at the Nangang Exhibition Center, a selection of exhibitions across the city confirm Taipei as one of the region's most exciting art hubs. Yahon Chang: Cursive OUR Museum, National Taiwan University of Arts (NTUA), No. 59, Section 1, Daguan Road, Banqiao...

Lada Nakonechna's solo exhibition, Images from abroad at Galerie EIGEN + ART (9 January–20 February 2020) ostensibly takes place on an end wall of the gallery. The wall bears markings hand-drawn in graphite that evoke shadows once cast by pictures, since removed, their fixtures also left in situ. Serving as a framework of variable...

About Blum & Poe

Established by Tim Blum and Jeff Poe in 1994, Blum & Poe is a contemporary art gallery promoting Los Angeles artists alongside several established and emerging international names. Blum & Poe also maintains a longstanding reputation for its part in introducing Japanese and Korean post-war art to an American audience.

Founded in Santa Monica, Blum & Poe now operates between three cities. Moving to a warehouse space on the outskirts of Culver City, in 2003, the gallery became the catalyst for Culver City’s Art District as other galleries were drawn to La Cienega Boulevard. After expanding the Culver City space, 2014 saw Blum & Poe galleries established in New York and Tokyo.

Artists

Although the gallery’s 25-year relationship with Takashi Murakami that saw his first solo show in Los Angeles is a defining part of the gallery’s story, Blum & Poe has worked with a broad range of artists and currently represents close to 50. Among them are established international names such as Anya Gallaccio, Yoshitomo Nara, Lee Ufan, and the late Karel Appel. In 2014 Blum & Poe held the first solo exhibition of Appel’s work in New York in more than 40 years, bolstering a renewed interest in the Dutch painter and former member of the CoBrA group. Responding to the contemporary relevance of Appel shown in the exhibition Alex Kitnick wrote in ArtForum, ‘Appel's work bears witness to an earlier moment of post-human possibility and, given the intense interest in the inhuman paces to which the body is subjected today, feels intriguingly relevant.’

Additionally, the gallery also promotes emerging artists both home-grown and hailing from overseas; for example, Mohamed Bourouissa, the Paris-based Algerian multimedia artist documenting life on the margins, and Pia Camil the Mexican maker of visibly hand-crafted paintings, sculpture and participatory installations exploring commercialisation, abstraction and the Mexican cultural landscape in the same breath. The gallery ushered in rapper Kanye West’s foray into art with the provocative exhibition FAMOUS (Los Angeles, 2016), which included hyper-realistic, life-size wax works of a host of celebrities depicted naked and sharing a bed. Popular Japanese DJ and artist EYƎ also participated in recent group exhibitions such as Vong Co RAHZI (Tokyo, 2019), showcasing his Kinesthetic DJ style alongside some of his album art for Japanese noise rock band the Boredoms, and more recent drawings and collages.

Blum & Poe celebrated its 25-year anniversary in 2019 with a two-part exhibition titled Parergon: Japanese Art of the 1980s and 1990s. Curated by Mika Yoshitake, the exhibition explored the youth-dominated art scene of the punkish 1980s and 1990s between Mono-ha and Neo-Pop, demonstrating the pivotal influence of this period on contemporary art today. It highlighted the gallery’s niche expertise on this subject in the American art scene. Previously in 2012 Blum and Poe introduced the Mono-ha art movement to a US audience with the survey show Requiem for the Sun: The Art of Mono-ha.

Exhibitions and fairs

Blum & Poe annually participate in key international art fairs including the Los Angeles, Tokyo, San Francisco, and New York Art Book Fairs; Art Basel, Frieze, FOG Design+Art, and FIAC. The gallery spaces also regularly host artists talks, lectures, screenings, and performances.

Upcoming & Recent Exhibitions

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Contemporary art exhibition, Group Exhibition, New Images of Man at Blum & Poe, Los Angeles

Upcoming

1 February–14 March 2020 Group Exhibition New Images of Man

Contemporary art exhibition, Harvey Quaytman, Harvey Quaytman at Blum & Poe, Los Angeles

Closed

9 November 2019–11 January 2020 Harvey Quaytman

Contemporary art exhibition, Matt Johnson, Matt Johnson at Blum & Poe, Los Angeles

Closed

9 November 2019–11 January 2020 Matt Johnson

Represented Artists

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Featured Artworks

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Winged insects carrying pollen, spreading rumors from flower to flower. You must be extremely careful when speaking of the fairies. I lean out the window over the flowers and sigh, “The fairies are mischievous, and can even have evil intentions.” Silly imaginings in my heart. And yes. I am made of the same materials as are dreams. Always asleep, I am really just a plain girl.

Now those are not the words of the birds. When the boy jumped down, I remembered that all the birds had flown away. One girl I do not recognize looks over this way, her eyes wide like saucers. She’s like a rose-colored fairy, this oft-rumored young lady. I didn’t know it at the time, but now I finally understand. All living things had been avoiding him. Lizards are ancestors to birds, they say, but I am an insect. And you. It’s all because you leave the windows open all the time that there were many little boys sleeping on my bed. by Kenjiro Okazaki contemporary artwork

Kenjiro Okazaki Winged insects carrying pollen, spreading rumors from flower to flower. You must be extremely careful when speaking of the fairies. I lean out the window over the flowers and sigh, “The fairies are mischievous, and can even have evil intentions.” Silly imaginings in my heart. And yes. I am made of the same materials as are dreams. Always asleep, I am really just a plain girl. Now those are not the words of the birds. When the boy jumped down, I remembered that all the birds had flown away. One girl I do not recognize looks over this way, her eyes wide like saucers. She’s like a rose-colored fairy, this oft-rumored young lady. I didn’t know it at the time, but now I finally understand. All living things had been avoiding him. Lizards are ancestors to birds, they say, but I am an insect. And you. It’s all because you leave the windows open all the time that there were many little boys sleeping on my bed., 2007Acrylic on canvas, two parts
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Not Yet Titled by Henry Taylor contemporary artwork

Henry Taylor Not Yet Titled, 2018Acrylic on canvas
59.7 x 45.1 cm Enquire about this work

The Surprised Tin Opener by Penny Slinger contemporary artwork

Penny Slinger The Surprised Tin Opener, 1969/2014C-print from original collage
40.6 x 26.9 cm Enquire about this work

Olympic Event by Robert Colescott contemporary artwork

Robert Colescott Olympic Event, 1972Acrylic on canvas
78 1/4 x 58 1/2 x 1 7/8 inches Enquire about this work

Don't Look At Me... by Penny Slinger contemporary artwork

Penny Slinger Don't Look At Me..., 1969/2014C-print from original collage
40.6 x 29.4 cm Enquire about this work

"What is dangerous here is a turning away from...the turning away from...anything any white American says. … But I don't know, and neither does Martin Luther King—none of us know—how to deal with those other people…who don't believe anything the white world says, and don't entirely believe anything I or Martin say" by Tony Lewis contemporary artwork

Tony Lewis "What is dangerous here is a turning away from...the turning away from...anything any white American says. … But I don't know, and neither does Martin Luther King—none of us know—how to deal with those other people…who don't believe anything the white world says, and don't entirely believe anything I or Martin say", 2019Graphite powder, screws, and rubber bands
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Conjunction 15-280 by Ha Chong-Hyun contemporary artwork

Ha Chong-Hyun Conjunction 15-280, 2015Oil on hemp
130 x 162 cm Enquire about this work

Portrait of Steve Cannon by Henry Taylor contemporary artwork

Henry Taylor Portrait of Steve Cannon, 2013Acrylic on canvas
180.7 x 153.4 cm Enquire about this work

Blum & Poe In Ocula Magazine

Blum & Poe Press Archive

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Yanagi’s rusty cast-iron 1:50 scale model of the Imperial Japanese Navy ship Akitsushima, a seaplane tender sunk in 1945, looks properly absurd and forlorn on the floor in the middle of the room. Parts of the model are scattered around the hull 'ambivalently in a process of either construction or deconstruction,' the Blum & Poe website says....

In advance of Henry Taylor's exhibition at Blum and Poe, the artist met Laura Hoptman, Executive Director of the Drawing Center, at the Drawing Center on Wooster Street in Soho for a conversation. What follows is a condensed version of that discussion, which ranges from Taylor's childhood, to the importance of drawing in his practice, and how he...

Natural landscapes turned noxious in photography on view at Blum & Poe

A toxic beauty emanates from — or maybe infects — six impressive new landscape photographs and three abstractions by Florian Maier-Aichen. It's the sixth solo show at Blum & Poe by the German-born, L.A.-based artist, and it represents a milieu in which he has worked for more than a dozen years.

Art Basel 2019 opens to the public on Thursday, June 13, with two preview days, on June 11 and 12. Some 290 galleries from 34 countries will show work at the Swiss fair, which runs through June 16.

Henry Taylor (1958, USA - Lives and works in Los Angeles)

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On the occassion of Kwong Young-Woo's solo exhibition at Kukje Gallery K2, Seoul, as well as his participation in the Kabinett sector of Art Basel Hong Kong 2017, take a look at historical footage of the artist discussing his groundbreaking practice and process in a new video released by Kukje Gallery:

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