Eric Blum’s layered arrangements of ink-washed, wax-infused silk are rooted in modern painting techniques yet activated by the experimental manipulation of his media.

The ambiguity of Blum’s references and the elusiveness of his narrative is beguiling. In his world, a scene viewed peripherally or as a background is something other than itself; potentially more desirable, poetic or preposterous. Its parts don’t always go together and it wavers at the edge of recognition.

Blum bypasses conscious decisions by blindly selecting his initial guidelines from random sources. The designated forms of the first layers are put through a process of rotating and flipping, covering and uncovering, overlapping, excising and splicing … ultimately reordering it’s original elements into a kind of visual anagram, no longer resembling its own preconception. He is drawn to unexpected juxtapositions and awkward harmonies with menacing undercurrents that don’t make a nuisance of themselves.