The First and the Biggest — Blum and Poe

Blum and Poe was the first gallery to arrive and it’s still the biggest in the Culver City area. Relocating from L.A.’s Chinatown and internationally known, everyone acknowledges that its arrival in 2003 pulled the other galleries into the neighborhood and inspired the birth of some new ones. Its exterior is as uninspiring as all of its neighbors’ but its interior, at 5000 sq ft, is significantly more generous, featuring two exhibition spaces with interior volumes that seem almost cathedral like. This feels particularly true when the galleries were hung with Chris Vasell’s recent paintings which occupied both spaces for Blum and Poe’s August show.

In the first gallery, Vasell shows five large paintings whose imagery consists of intestines, bowels, brains and other bodily stuff. In some of the paintings, the parts appear to be massed on a table that isn’t quite level, making the guts puddle up against each other and the edges of the formats. It’s all very ooey-gooey; far from easy for the eyes to dwell upon and far from most notions of ‘pretty’ or ‘beautiful.’ On the other hand, given the very wide range of images seen on canvas these days, it doesn’t seem all that wild, weird or shocking either.

Vasell’s color consists of oddly vibrant tones of grayed purples, browned reds, burnt greens, and troubled yellows - hues that might look more familiar in a tattoo parlor than in the typical painter’s studio. This paint inhabits its surfaces more than it covers it, again suggesting a tattoo. This suggestion is further enhanced by the lightly suntanned Caucasian flesh tone of the canvasses which makes the paintings resemble even more closely the look of freshly tattooed skin; minus the hair, of course.

If the work in this series represents an attempt to merge the physical and expressive character of painting and tattooing, it doesn’t quite succeed. As painting, its grittiness, both physical and expressive is only illusory, as it must be. Canvas is only canvas while only flesh and bone are flesh and bone.

The relative weakness of these paintings is confirmed by the way that they work best when seen in each other’s company in the specific spaces of the gallery at Blum and Poe in which they’re shown. It actually seems that the dimensions of the paintings, were calculated to play off the dimensions of the walls they hang on; walls Vasell would be familiar with because he’d shown here twice before. Because of this neat fit between between the paintings and their walls, the outcome has more of the feeling of an installation - more impressive as a whole than any of the individual works are by themselves. While such a close knitting between a group of paintings and their surroundings might constitute a worthy accomplishment for an interior designer, but it’s a dubious achievement for a painter.

The paintings are part of a series titled “To The People That Know This Is Nowhere.”  The enigmatic title arouses wonder about what the “This” refers to, and what kind of nowhere. The question comes up only because the paintings; whether seen either as representational imagery or more simply as a group of lumpy lines, shapes and colors; are as much of an enigma as the title under which they’re exhibited.

Fortunately, things get better in the second gallery.

Three of the four paintings here share the series title,” To The People of Los Angeles.”  They are very similar to each other but very different from the paintings Vasell shows in the first gallery even though they’re part of the same exhibition. To begin with, their construction is very different, working literally on two levels; or more accurately, on two layers .

The first layer is a format filling Op Art-ish image of two interlocking concentric rings representing some sort of radiance like the wave pattern produced by a pair of loud speakers partially submerged in a pool of water and blasting forth the fourth note of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. Vasell creates the image using a translucent color that might be the sum of the colors in the paintings in the first gallery, but much paler and more varied in its density. The proximity to Op Art is evident here; Op of the type practiced by Brigette Riley, among others, using line that was primarily curvilinear.

The second level/layer of these works consists of precision cut one inch squares of raw canvas precisely aligned in a rectilinear grid across the paintings’ entire surface. The proximity to Op Art is evident here as well; Op of the type practiced irritatingly by Victor Vasarelly in the 1970s and wildly popular in the poster world for several of those years.

The fusion of curvilinear Op Art with rectilinear Op Art does not double the Op effects but in fact reduces them by half. This is a thankful result and produces paintings which are visually dynamic and intriguing for the eye.

These paintings don’t play to their architectural surround in the way that the first gallery’s paintings do. It’s a disassociation which serves the paintings well. They don’t need it.

There’s one more painting in the exhibition, the only one from the series, “To The People of Alhambra.”  Here, over an undifferentiated thoroughly black first level/layer, Vasell constructs his second level/layer grid using near white bleached canvas squares whose size is not consistent and whose threads hang out all over the place. This only amplifies the Op Art effect of creating visual jitterbuggery that drives some people crazy and gives most eyes headaches.

The work makes sense as a practice piece or as a study, for the others constructed similarly, but why was it in the show? Because Vasell doesn’t particularly like the people of Alhambra?.

Whatever the case, it’s the people of Los Angeles who fare the best in this exhibition.

The Chris Vasell exhibition is the last to be offered in the 5,000 square foot building that  Blum and Poe Gallery has occupied since arriving in Culver City (technically L.A.; but who’s counting).

Early in October, 2009, the gallery will present its exhibitions in its new space directly across La Cienega from its old location.  The new gallery provides 21,000 square feet.  This is serious growth.