Blum & Poe: an exhibition of new sculptures by Susumu Koshimizu, Blum & Poe, Tokyo May 14 – July 2, 2016 Opening Reception: Saturday, May 14, 6 – 8pm

Susumu Koshimizu Blum & Poe, Tokyo May 14 – July 2, 2016 Opening Reception: Saturday, May 14, 6 – 8pm

Tokyo, (March 31, 2016)—Blum & Poe is very pleased to present an exhibition of new sculptures by Susumu Koshimizu. This is Koshimizu’s second solo exhibition with the gallery. Koshimizu was one of the core figures of Mono-ha (School of Things), a movement that radically redefined the Japanese art scene during the late 1960s and early 1970s with ephemeral installations of natural and industrial materials. From early on, Koshimizu’s investigation of material, surface, and space resulted in some of Mono-ha’s most iconic artworks. At the Paris Youth Biennale in 1971, he exhibited From Surface to Surface (Wooden Logs Placed in a Radial Pattern on the Ground) (1971), a circular arrangement of thirty pine beams sliced at varying intervals and angles. In the mid-1970s, Koshimizu began his Working Table series, which develops the ideas initially explored in From Surface to Surface. The surfaces of these sculptures are variously incised with pools of water, or supplemented with stacks of branches and elongated protrusions reminiscent of horns or ribs. Koshimizu has expert knowledge of carving, joinery, and the qualities of wood and has made sculptures out of pine, cedar, cherry, birch, cypress, hemlock, paulownia, oak, maple, and chestnut. Koshimizu debuted his Working Table series internationally at the Venice Biennale in 1976. However, the sculptures were discarded at the close of the show. The Working Tables in this exhibition are conceived as a variation of these lost works, consisting of four tables whose carved surfaces form an interlocking series of geometric patterns. Juxtaposed against the gallery’s expansive view of the Meiji Shrine forest, these sculptures are a meditation on the quality of wood in its natural and manmade states. Susumu Koshimizu was born in Uwajima, Ehime Prefecture, in 1944, and currently lives and works in Kyoto and Osaka. He studied in the sculpture department at Tama Art University, Tokyo, from 1966 to 1971. Since then, he has had numerous solo exhibitions in Japan, including at the Museum of Fine Arts, Gifu (1992); Ehime Prefectural Museum of Art  (1992); Kuma Museum of Art, Osaka (2005); and Kyoto City University of Arts (2010). Following his inclusion in Requiem for the Sun: The Art of Mono-ha, curated by Mika Yoshitake and held at Blum & Poe, Los Angeles in 2012, Koshimizu has been featured in many landmark surveys, most recently: Other Primary Structures, Jewish Museum, New York (2014); Prima Materia, Punta della Dogana, Venice, Italy (2013); Parallel Views: Italian and Japanese Art from the 1950s, 60s, and 70s, The Warehouse, Dallas, Texas (2013); and Tokyo 1955–1970: A New Avant-Garde, Museum of Modern Art, New York (2012). Previously he was included in Reconsidering Mono-ha, National Museum of Art, Osaka (2005); Century City: Art and Culture in the Modern Metropolis, Tate Modern, London (2001); Japanese Art after 1945: Scream Against the Sky, Yokohama Museum of Art, Guggenheim Museum Soho, New York, and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (1994); São Paulo Biennale (1983); and Tokyo Biennale ’70: Between Man and Matter, Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum (1970). Image: Susumu Koshimizu Working Table (97), 1976-1997 Japanese hemlock wood 32 x 58.3 x 37.8 inches Courtesy of the artist and Blum & Poe, Los Angeles/New York/Tokyo  Locations Blum & Poe, Tokyo, 1-14-34 Jingumaeshibuya, Tokyo, 150-0001 Blum & Poe, Los Angeles, 2727 S La Cienega Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90034 Blum & Poe, New York, 19 East 66th Street, New York, NY 10065 Concurrently on view Blum & Poe, Los Angeles, Julian Schnabel: Infinity on Trial (through April 30) Blum & Poe, New York, Kazunori Hamana, Yuji Ueda, and Otani Workshop (through April 9) Hours Los Angeles, Tuesday – Saturday, 10am – 6pm New York, Tuesday – Friday, 10am – 6pm Tokyo, Tuesday – Saturday, 11am – 7pm Join the conversation on Instagram and Twitter: @blumandpoe Fineartmagazine

Julian Schnabel , Blum & Poe, Los Angeles March 18 - April 30, 2016 Opening reception: Friday, March 18, 6 – 8pm

Julian Schnabel Infinity on Trial  Blum & Poe, Los Angeles March 18 - April 30, 2016 Opening reception: Friday, March 18, 6 – 8pm

Los Angeles—Blum & Poe is pleased to present forty years of painting by artist Julian Schnabel. This exhibition marks Schnabel’s first solo presentation with Blum & Poe. After a hiatus from the West Coast art scene for nearly a decade, this first exhibition at Blum & Poe takes the form of a concise overview of an exhilaratingly divergent painting practice—making a forceful case for the historical importance of Schnabel’s oeuvre, as well as his ever-growing relevance to a new generation of artists.  Twelve important paintings made between 1975 and 2015 will be displayed in the ground floor gallery. Together these paintings make manifest the scope and depth of Schnabel’s work—his groundbreaking material experimentation, his exceptional formal range, and simultaneous mastery of both figurative and abstract idioms. Not only will this exhibition serve as an introduction to this artist’s legendary work for younger viewers, but it also positions Schnabel as one of the great auteurs of the postwar period.  Transcending the question of recognizable style, Schnabel’s practice, while wildly heterogeneous, is connected together by his unmistakable personal vision—his distinctive aesthetic touch, the audacity and freedom of his varied gestures, the insistence on the physicality of his surfaces, and the unapologetic emotional inflection in all of his works. As Schnabel wrote in an attempt to locate his unique approach to making work, “feeling cannot be separated from intellect… what is expressed is a feeling of love for something that has already existed, a response to something already felt.” Giving evidence to Schnabel’s singular authorship, the distilled selection of paintings includes: The Patients and the Doctors (1978), his first work deploying an abstracted mosaic of ceramic shards and sculptural picture planes; Jack the Bellboy (1975), an early wax painting that Schnabel considers his first mature painting; The Tunnel (Death of an Ant Near a Power Plant in the Country) (1982), an early painting made on found plywood in metric sizes that he bought in a lumber yard while working in Porto Ercole, Italy; Rebirth II (1986) a painting that incorporates an antique Kabuki theater backdrop; and The Edge of Victory (1987), a magisterial tableau made upon a tape-encrusted and stained boxing tarp from the old Gramercy Gym that Schnabel inscribed and painted with sweeping white marks. Without regard to chronology, this selection of radical, foundational pictures is hung in relationship to works from the past fifteen years. These more recent examples feature one of Schnabel’s Goat Paintings from 2015, from a series begun in 2012; a spray paint composition from 2014; an abstract “pink” painting made in 2015 from the sun-faded canopy Schnabel found in Mexico; and a regal full-length Portrait of Tatiana Lisovskaia As The Duquesa De Alba II (2014) referencing Goya. Accompanying these compositions, the upstairs gallery features approximately forty drawings made between 1976 to the present that echo the formal and conceptual range of the paintings in the downstairs gallery. In sum, this exhibition attempts to foreground the emotive punctum that runs throughout Schnabel’s work—otherwise stated, the wounding point or touching detail where his unconventional methods and materials are fused with emotive, tactile, and deeply narrative meaning.  Despite the range in dates in which these works have been made, looking at these pieces together reveal a consistent artistic “touch” or transformational element that Schnabel is able to imbue in the found materials he assimilates into his work. Running throughout the exhibition is a pictorial vocabulary that is consistent throughout Schnabel’s career but takes on many forms. The trope of the white stroke—curvilinear swirls of white paint that often disrupt both figurative and abstract compositions—or the haphazard traces of splashed purple pigment are seen in numerous paintings selected in the show. Likewise, dedications, proper names, and other literary references in titles are used to evoke a narrative 'imaginary' that runs through Schnabel’s oeuvre. As Schnabel wrote about the seminal painting Jack the Bellboy, featured in the last room of the exhibition, “The difference between the physical and pictorial elements of the painting confounded an easy viewing; it was hard to look at. It activated a sensation, like color blindness, that yielded a sensory disorder that I thought was an analogue for my emotional state. It was also about the third intangible element between the viewer and itself: the blind spot. It was like a sort of dyslexia where a letter’s proximity to another makes it disappear.”(1) In many ways Schnabel’s attempt to describe the alchemical reaction simultaneously generated by the retinal, conceptual, and emotional affects of his work could be applied to all of the paintings selected for this exhibition. Schnabel’s work has been exhibited all over the world. His paintings, sculptures, and works on paper have been the subject of numerous exhibitions: the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (1982); Tate Gallery, London (1982); Whitechapel Gallery, London (1987); Kunsthalle Düsseldorf (1987); Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris (1987); Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (1987); San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (1987); Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (1987); Musée d’Art Contemporain de Nîmes, France (1989); Staatliche Graphische Sammlung, Munich (1989); Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brussels (1989); Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh (1989); Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (1989); Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Monterrey, Mexico (1994); Fundació Joan Miró, Barcelona (1995); Galleria d’Arte Moderna di Bologna (1996); Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt/Main (2004); Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid (2004); Rotonda della Besana, Milan (2007); Tabakalera, Donostia-San Sebastián (2007); Museo di Capodimonte, Naples (2009); Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto (2010); Museo Correr, Venice (2011); J.F. Willumsens Museum, Frederikssund, Denmark (2013); Brant Foundation Art Study Center, Greenwich, CT (2013); Dallas Contemporary (2014); Dairy Art Centre, London (2014); Museu de Arte de São Paulo, (2014); NSU Art Museum Fort Lauderdale, FL (2014); and University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Arbor (2015). 1. Julian Schnabel, CVJ: Nicknames of Maitre D's and Other Excerpts from Life (New York: Random House, 1987), 64. Image: Julian Schnabel, The Edge of Victory, 1987 Gesso, gaffer tape, sweat and blood on boxing ring floor , 136 x 192 inches. © Julian Schnabel Studio, Private collection. Courtesy of the artist and Blum & Poe, Los Angeles/New York/Tokyo Locations Blum & Poe, Los Angeles, 2727 S La Cienega Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90034 Blum & Poe, New York, 19 East 66th Street, New York, NY 10065 Blum & Poe, Tokyo, 1-14-34 Jingumaeshibuya, Tokyo, 150-0001 Concurrently on view Blum & Poe, New York, Kazunori Hamana, Yuji Ueda, and Otani Workshop (through April 9) Blum & Poe, Tokyo, Kishio Suga and Robert Morris (through May 7) Hours Los Angeles, Tuesday – Saturday, 10am – 6pm New York, Tuesday – Friday, 10am – 6pm Tokyo, Tuesday – Saturday, 11am – 7pm #fineartmagazine

KAZUNORI HAMANA, YUJI UEDA, and OTANI WORKSHOP Curated by Takashi Murakami Blum & Poe, New York March 3 – April 9, 2016

KAZUNORI HAMANA, YUJI UEDA, and OTANI WORKSHOP Curated by Takashi Murakami Blum & Poe, New York March 3 – April 9, 2016 Opening reception: Thursday, March 3, 6 – 8pm

New York, NY (February 25, 2016)—Blum & Poe is pleased to present an exhibition of Japanese ceramics featuring the work of Kazunori Hamana, Yuji Ueda, and Otani Workshop — organized and curated by Takashi Murakami. For this exhibition, Takashi Murakami assembles a new generation of Japanese ceramicists whose unique pottery methods merge a respect for lineage with improvisation, experimentation, and refinement. As with the artists’ previous exhibition at Blum & Poe Los Angeles (September 2015) — Hamana, Ueda, and Otani bring their unique wares and collective imagination to the New York gallery space to create a lucid and otherworldly environment. Central to both the artists' practices and lifestyles, an emphasis on the integrity of natural objects and processes drives this presentation of anthropomorphic clay forms; asymmetrical vessels; and singed, crackling, glazed surfaces. Locally harvested clays are shaped sometimes over the span of many days; mixed with experimental materials to produce unique effects; glazes formed with combinations of metals, ash, and wood; pieces baked in subterranean or above-ground wood-fired kilns.  This display of ceramics is an illumination of age-old traditions being expanded into the 21st century. Informed by and in conceptual counter to elements of contemporary pop culture, mass production and mass consumption, Kazunori Hamana, for example, creates large ceramic vessels without immediately perceivable use, working without tools and without haste. Many of the works in the exhibition by these three young artists have never been seen before in the United States.  Kazunori Hamana makes ceramics on the pacific coast, in Chiba, Japan. The work is both stark and full of personality, and oftentimes the surfaces are striped or imbued with designs or language. Urns, bowls, vessels, cups, and plates — each irregularly shaped by not only the vast history of the ceramic arts, but also by the characteristics — are found in the coastal environment where he works. Yuji Ueda comes from a family of award-winning tea farmers in the Shiga Prefecture town of Shigaraki. His experimental approach to glazing and firing leads to a variety of distinct forms and vessels. Working both in intimate sizes and in larger scales, Ueda’s alien surfaces and fragile textures are both tolerant and unyielding. Otani Workshop is also based in Shigaraki — one of the great centers of Japanese ceramics for the last 800 years. In addition to clay, Otani works with wood, iron, and other materials. His small jars, vases, and other sculptural forms depicting figures and faces are characteristic of the many styles and motifs found throughout Japanese culture. Image: Kazunori Hamana, Untitled, c. 2015, Ceramic, 7 1/2 x 8 7/8 x 9 inches, © the artist. Photo: Toru Kometani. Courtesy of the artist and Blum & Poe, Los Angeles/New York/Tokyo Locations Blum & Poe, New York, 19 East 66th Street, New York, NY 10065 Blum & Poe, Los Angeles, 2727 S. La Cienega Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90034 Blum & Poe, Tokyo, 1-14-34 Jingumaeshibuya, Tokyo, 150-0001 Concurrently on view Blum & Poe, Los Angeles, through March 12, Dansaekhwa and Minimalism Blum & Poe, Tokyo, through March 5, Matt Saunders: Two Worlds Hours Los Angeles, Tuesday – Saturday, 10am–6pm New York, Monday – Friday, 10am–6pm Tokyo, Tuesday – Saturday, 11am–7pm #fineartmagazine