Blum & Poe Presenting Carroll Dunham

Also found on the La Cienega Blvd. row was the art gallery Blum & Poe. It was currently presenting the artwork of Carroll Dunham on the first floor. Carroll Dunham is an artist working in New York and Connecticut whose artwork was the center of many one-person exhibitions. His work is even included in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art, NY, and many other venues. I found the contrast between Dunham and Natrop highly interesting.

Where Natrop mainly used cut pieces of paper to convey his intentions, Dunham uses paintings--in this particular exhibition--of mainly trees, and human-like characters to depict meaning. Dunham, unlike Natrop who chose to use soft muted colors, employs a vibrant, playful palette which adds to the strange quality of his paintings. At Blum & Poe, Dunham combined two of his most well-known type of paintings. One is the human-like characters, colored with pink, flesh tones, with full nudity and a discomfort to the perspective and to their poses. Another are his detailed, comic-like paintings of trees that have a hint of being dug up or a coming fall.

In view of the unrestricted naked bodies, one can see the underlying glimpse of the trees--behind, surrounding, inbetween, underneath the bodies. The connection between the nudes and the natural atmosphere. Dunham uses the effect of a subtle shifting foreground and background to unify his two ideas as a whole, balanced painting.

I was surprised to see how intimate yet blunt these images were. Unlike Natrop who used a more subtle, even ambiguous nature to his artwork to convey struggle and complexity, Dunham uses a more obvious tone--although his message may be hard to interpret. Although Dunham did have some sort of subtlety to his message, it was more of a louder medium compared to Natrop's which was much more ambiguous. Dunham also used a more wide, bright space to display his artworks, whereas Natrop used his enclosed gallery and the structure of the building to enhance his implications.

I really enjoyed the playful-like tendency that hid the conflict being depicted within the pictures. I think that is what attracted me to these colorful paintings. They seemed so lively and exciting but represented a more creepy meaning.

-Joyce Pak