UN-ERASE-ABLE: Daniel Blumberg

Union Gallery is pleased to present Daniel Blumberg’s UN-ERASE-ABLE, curated by William Gustafsson.

For the first time, Daniel Blumberg exhibits his silverpoint drawings in UN-ERASE-ABLE. Utilizing the widely retired and traditional medium of silverpoint, Blumberg prolifically produces these works on paper. As a touring musician and composer Blumberg took to silverpoint for its durability and portability, it cannot be erased, smudged, altered after the mark is made on the page. Paradoxically, the silver marks oxidize over time, developing continuously, out of the artist’s hand. Blumberg always carries a small pocket sized pouch containing sheets of prepared paper and his silver stylus.

In larger context of drawing, the mediums of metalpoint, including silver, gold and copper, were used predominately before the discovery of graphite, which was quickly taken to for it’s greater flexibility and expressiveness. Old master greats such as Leonardo da Vinci, Albrecht Dürer, and Jan van Eyck appreciated the mediums unforgiving, stubbornness for developing their drawing. It is unadorned, with all the dynamics in the line, rather than the gimics of the medium. Metalpoint is neglected in the present day.

Described by Hans-Ulrich Obrist as Micrograms, a nod to Robert Walser, Blumberg’s works are small and confidential, an immediate ongoing travelling zoom into Blumberg’s self as an artist, musician, and person, forever depicting his surroundings, thoughts, and actions. Text falls in and out of frame and the drawings serve as a visual diary, diagrams of life. His drawing practice is an obsession to Blumberg, working almost continuously. Sometimes catching a glimpse into very personal and intimate moments yet also depicting the insignificant occasions of living, his lens moves fluidly between the focused and the unfocused. Abstract bodily forms with intense facial expressions consistently float in the open spaces of the page. You are invited to view as if through a microscope or telescope into the work, zooming so far in that you find yourself falling out the other side into an expansive landscape of rhyme, portraits, questions and just nothing. Without a narrative or explanation, we have an anti-ending without resolve, open for interpretation.

UN-ERASE-ABLE is a core epicenter of Blumberg’s ongoing, ever expanding series of micrograms. Predominately he works on the “micro” scale with his silverpoint works, however, the artist also produces work on a larger, and occasionally immense, scale in a variety of mediums on paper, including graphite, watercolour, oil stick.

Blumberg is currently showing a large-scale graphite work, watercolours and video work in the exhibition HYPER! , curated by Max Dax, at the Deichtorhallen Hamburg, Germany. Including, but not limited to, artists Mark Leckey, Daniel Richter, Andreas Gursky, Wolfgang Tillmans, Albert Oehlen, and Sarah Morris. The exhibition continues until August 4th, 2019

Blumberg lives and works in London, UK