Jerry Bleem + Mark Newport
| Date | May 19, 1994 - Jul 31, 1994 |
|---|---|
| Artist | Bleem Jerry and Mark Newport |
Exhibition Overview
Jerry Bleem and Mark Newport both build intricate sculptures that poetically transform workaday materials into objects that make deliberate reference to the human body; its orifices, organs and appendages. In this 1994 exhibition, these two artists exhibit work made with readily available materials. Bleem staples together shredded bits of found cardboard, paper and photographs into hollow vessels that recall fossils and shells, plant life and internal organs. Newport’s sculptures, made of fastidiously knotted waxed-linen threads, evoke states of change or growth.
Jerry Bleem + Mark Newport
Artist Statements, 1994
Jerry Bleem
I am fascinated by the human need to create meaning and to order reality. Taking the disparate elements of life and making sense of them has always been the cultural task. This construction of truth delineates a system by which we can orient ourselves. Though the ability to find some "absolute" is implied, the process is quite arbitrary.
The forms I make are the result of ordering individual elements in a constructive process. Each single result denies innumerable other possibilities. However, intention is not the entire story; a coincidence of accidents also helps to create these pieces. Though I begin with a clear idea, the unfolding of the work invariably changes my initial concept. It is in the course of putting these sculptures together that their forms actually emerge.
All of my pieces have openings. At times they allow the interiors of the works to be readily seen. In other instances, the inside can only be seen through the viewer's imagination. In part, these entries are thresholds where inside meets outside, where "heaven meets earth." I think of these openings as orifices of access, as places of passage.
Ordinary, non-precious, discarded materials are what I most often use in my work. (My life is more frequently informed by the ordinary than by what is extraordinary or exceptional.) Botanic forms and the human body have strongly influenced my work. I also draw upon humanity's long history of making containers for both practical and symbolic purposes. These hollow forms imply both a presence now absent, and a potential not yet present.
I make work to contemplate life and the mystery inherent in living.
Mark Newport
"The first thing that strikes the careless observer is that women are unlike men. They are 'the opposite sex' (though why 'opposite' I do not know; what is the 'neighbouring sex'?) But the fundamental thing is that women are more like men than anything else in the world."
- Dorothy L. Sayers, "The Human-Not-Quite-Human"
Why the opposite? Using an abstract sculptural language I explore this question. The forms of the human body; organs, muscles and appendages form the basis of my sculptures. These forms refer to the essential and dichotomous qualities associated with male and female - projection and containment. Whether they are embodied in one material - linen or gut - or composed of two materials, my goal is to hint at a duality. This duality suggests my understanding of the world around me; one of complements and balance instead of polarities.
© 2007 Textile Museum of Canada
