Christopher Hartmann Nightswimming The sun had not yet risen. The sea was indistinguishable from the sky, except that the sea was slightly creased as if a cloth had wrinkles in it. Gradually, as the sky whitened a dark line lay on the horizon dividing the sea from the sky and the grey cloth became barred with thick strokes moving, one after another, beneath the surface, following each other, pursuing each other, perpetually. —Virginia Woolf, The Waves Blum & Poe is pleased to present Nightswimming, London-based artist Christopher Hartmann’s first solo exhibition with the gallery. Hartmann’s paintings portray situations that are seemingly detached from specific time and space. These settings often imply physical interaction or dialogue but are imbued with conflicting moods of intimacy and alienation, the indistinct yet persistent feelings of unease latent to our oversaturated media landscape, and technology-mediated social connections. The construction of the painting itself mimics the layering processes of photo-editing software, with the built-up application of artificial color tones recalling the alienating luminosity of digital screens. This exhibition focuses on Hartmann’s interest in abstraction, beginning with a series of beds that appear to have just been left. These works evoke the vulnerability of sleep, the ambiguities of dream states, and the intimacy of physical relationships. Loaded with a heightened sense of emotion and reality, they inhabit a liminal space between fact and fiction, the reality of the present and memory of the past. The bed paintings are presented in dialogue with two seascapes. The myriad folds in the bedsheets mirror in the infinite ripples on the water’s surface, intimating different states of immersion—the consciousness suspended during sleep and the body suspended in water. The sense of absence conjured by the works in the first gallery gives way to the gradual introduction of a bodily presence in further paintings that alternately explore intimacy and isolation. One depicts two pairs of legs aligned within the rippling folds of white sheets. Another two show figures lying alone, their body language alternately inviting and more guarded. Subtly larger than life yet intimate and relatable, the looming perspectives of these compositions implicate the viewer as more than a merely detached observer. The final body of work on view presents close-ups of entwined hands, concluding the exhibition with gentle moments of touch bathed in natural light. Christopher Hartmann (b. 1993, Germany) is a German-Costa Rican artist living and working in London. He holds an MA in Communication Design from Central Saint Martins, London, UK and completed his MFA in Fine Art at Goldsmiths, University of London, UK in 2021. He is a recent grantee from the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation (2020) and resident of The Fores Project, London, UK (2020) and Nassima Landau Foundation, Tel Aviv, Israel (2022). Solo exhibitions of Hartmann’s work include State of Life, May I Live, May I Love, T&Y Projects, Tokyo, Japan (2022) and What I Want to Say Is This, Nassima Landau Foundation, Tel Aviv, Israel (2021). Selected group exhibitions include Queering the Narrative, Neuer Aachener Kunstverein, Aachen, Germany (2022); MFA Fine Art Degree Show, Goldsmiths, University of London, UK (2021); High Voltage, Nassima Landau, Tel Aviv, Israel (2020); and London Grads Now, Saatchi Gallery, London, UK (2020). ____ Acaye Kerunen A NI EE (I AM HERE) Blum & Poe is pleased to present the gallery’s first solo exhibition with Ugandan artist Acaye Kerunen, her first solo presentation in the United States. This American debut follows Kerunen’s acclaimed showcase in Uganda’s inaugural national pavilion at the 59th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, Venice, Italy in 2022, which received the biennale jury Special Mention award for best national participation. Drawing the viewer into Kerunen’s immersive, cross-disciplinary practice—one which includes visual art, curation, activism, acting, poetry, writing, and performance—this exhibition emphasizes a multifaceted approach to triumphant noncompliance in a postcolonial world. Stitching, appending, twining, and knotting several commissioned works into inclusive wholes, Kerunen drives her platform home via her means of production, imagery, and materiality. Aligning the process of its own production with activism in the service of environmentalism, resistance to colonial and patriarchal tendencies, and the dismantling of hierarchies that devalue women’s labor—Kerunen’s work addresses the greater good from the moment it is conceptualized, before it is even presented in the exhibition space. Taking a stand against climate change, the artist’s process includes communal living and materials sourced in the wetlands of her motherland, Uganda. Employing techniques Kerunen learned from her mother and the matriarchs before her, the artist constructs her work from coils of woven natural fiber that are articulated by women in her community. The individuals and philosophies called upon to make the work are living extensions of the art objects they produce, as the systems and utopias they create serve as Kerunen’s ever-evolving counterpoints against problematic structures of power. Kerunen’s physical objects ground the artist’s oeuvre, serving as touchstones and points of entry for the viewer to investigate the other, more transitory portions of the artist’s work such as her activism, production as a form of social practice, and performance. In this exhibition, the artist uses recurrent imagery to drive home the messages of resistance that she has emphasized throughout her practice. The form of the butterfly is alluded to in Nyakotha - The one who flys off (2023). The butterfly’s process, beginning as a caterpillar, is one that Kerunen uses to convey sentiments of transformation and growth. In other sections of the exhibition, Kerunen similarly uses repeating tropes such as the colors black and white to indicate unified division and mappings of her own body to explore the emotions ingrained in her various stances. Beyond the physical object and its means of production, Kerunen also engages in time-based and intangible mediums to achieve her end. As part of this exhibition, the artist deploys the moving image. This video work, an intangible media that is a relatively new form within the plastic arts, illustrates the way Kerunen has prioritized elevating types of art making that challenge the traditional canon. Whether using techniques that had been pigeonholed as craft or creating work that is partially evanescent, Kerunen’s force for change rings true in her wide-ranging choice of media. Layer upon layer of consideration and meaning is embedded in every inch of this exhibition. Each object, activation, or communication has been imbued with heritage, sentiment, and hope for a better future—from sustainable materials to partial articulation by underserved communities, impactful compositions to intangible practices. All these messages commingle—unifying in a resounding chorus—to chip away at and call attention to social orders that perpetuate inequity. Acaye Kerunen’s (b. Kampala, Uganda) work was showcased in the two-person exhibition Radiance: They Dream in Time in Uganda’s inaugural national pavilion at the 59th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, Venice, Italy (2022) which received the biennale jury Special Mention award for best national participation together with France. She presented her first solo exhibition, titled Iwang Sawa, at the Afriart Gallery, Kampala, Uganda (2021). That same year, the artist participated in a curatorial fellowship supported by Newcastle University; Makerere University, Kampala, Uganda; 32° East, Kampala, Uganda; and Afriart Gallery, Kampala, Uganda. In 2018, she showed her interactive, collaborative installation Kendu (2018-present) at the Nyege Nyege Ugandan Culture and Music Festival. The artist holds a BS in mass communication from the Islamic University in Uganda, Mbale, Uganda. Kerunen lives and works in Kampala, Uganda. ____ Matt Saunders The Distances Opening reception: Saturday, July 1, 5–7pm Blum & Poe is pleased to present The Distances, American artist Matt Saunders’s fourth solo exhibition with the gallery and his first in Los Angeles since 2014. Exploring the open border between painting and photography, The Distances sees Saunders delving further into his ongoing study of liminal spaces in the dividing lines that dictate visual art’s medium specificities. In pointing to the limitations of these categorical barriers, the artist engages with other observed dichotomies—proximity versus distance, immediacy versus mediation, or gaze versus counter gaze. Painterly gestures atop the photographic surface evoke touch and contact while vacillating between convergence and divergence with the image below. Oil paint has long been behind Saunders’s photographic process. It now takes the forefront. Each of Saunders’s works for The Distances begins with an oil painting on thin chiffon. Configured as a negative, wherein white is black and colors are inverted, these stretched paintings are taken into a darkroom and used to strain light onto photosensitive paper to make each photographic image. The resulting prints are brought back into the studio where paint is thoughtfully applied to their surface, thus the image comes together from both sides of the photo’s process. The Distances (Joe) (2022) shows well the steps behind its making. Vibrant aqua interventions press forward on the picture plane, partially obscuring an expressive, almost photo-realistic face. At each stage of his practice, Saunders activates an encounter between the image and the material that captures it. This chain of transference is not separate from the meaning of the work, which calls up themes of overlap, transformation, and the fluidity of constructed social categories such as gender. Humanizing these exchanges, the eyes of Saunders’s emotive subjects gaze upon the viewer as they are also gazed upon, almost daring equal and opposite perception. The artist created the bulk of these works in the solitude of the pandemic when the interpersonal seemingly became a lost art. In dialogue with his teaching, Saunders reflected on the performative and fluid versions of gender experienced by each generation; thus, the subjects in The Distances return to many of the foundational muses who he painted early on in his career. With this revisitation, he creates a channel through to his early work—marking his own stylistic transitions from early to midcareer. Matt Saunders (b. 1975, Tacoma, WA) is based between New York, Boston, and Berlin. He currently serves as a full Professor of Art, Film and Visual Studies at Harvard University. Recent solo exhibitions include Currents 114: Matt Saunders, Saint Louis Art Museum, St. Louis, MO (2017); Tank Space, Shanghai, China (2017); Century Rolls, Tate Liverpool, UK (2012); and Parallel Plot, Renaissance Society, Chicago, IL (2010). Saunders was the 2022 recipient of the American Academy of Arts and Letters Arts Purchase Prize, 2015 Rappaport Prize from the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, 2013 Prix Jean-François Prat and 2009 Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation award. His work is represented in numerous public collections, including the Deutsche Bank Collection; Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, MA; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.; Istanbul Museum of Modern Art, Istanbul, Turkey; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; MUDAM, Luxembourg; Museum Brandhorst, Munich, Germany; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA; Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; Saint Louis Art Museum, St. Louis, MO; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY; Tate Modern, London, UK; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; and the Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT.