Sydney Blum: æther

Sydney Blum's sculptures and prints express the ephemeral. They embody the longing to soar, to touch the sky, to reach beyond the clouds into an unknown space; all informed by the purity of colour and fluidity. The work beckons one to enter a liminal place that flows with the spirit of air.

This exhibition includes two series of work. The wall sculptures, Icarus-Colour-Space, create complex forms and gradations of hue that ripple, contracting and expanding space and light. Through painstaking construction and assembly by hand, these pieces bend colour, and bridge a logic, materiality, with the upper regions of the universe.

The prints, also part of the Icarus-Colour-Space series, are based on the mapping used to develop the sculptures. Their strong vibrational and bold graphics are cut to shape and float on the wall to give dimension to the energy they radiate.

The series of smaller sculptures in this exhibition, “Hungry for the Cosmos”, creates a kitchen-table-conversation with the Aether. Through vibrant and playful shapes of colour, pattern, and form—an asteroid that landed from outer space for breakfast, perhaps-- they speak through crazy, frolicking, fanciful variations. They can be rotated and turned to create completely different experiences, thus delighting with the formal concerns of a sculptural vocabulary and the leap between the familiar and the aetherial.