JB Blunk: Muse
Past exhibition
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In collaboration with the Estate of JB Blunk, Kasmin presents the first exhibition of the artist’s jewelry, alongside a selection of paintings, ceramics, and wooden sculpture, to go on view in concurrence with NYC Jewelry Week. Many of the works on view were made by Blunk for his partner and muse Christine Nielson, as well as for family friends, in his studio on their property in Inverness, California. They include earrings, necklaces, bracelets, rings, and belts, all realized with the material and formal character of the artist’s much larger sculpture. Informed by an unfaltering reverence for the natural world and his interest in ecology and primordial landscapes, Blunk took forms from antiquity and mysticism, reimagining them instinctively through sourced and salvaged natural materials.
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From the 1950s until late into his life, Blunk designed and hand-crafted unique pieces of jewelry that, like much of his sculpture, demonstrates both an innate appreciation for the natural world and also a disregard for strict categories in art-making. A pioneer of the 1960s back-to-the-land movement, Blunk rejected any sensible claim of distinction between sculpture that makes a utilitarian statement and that which is abstract.
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Blunk’s commitment to the use of natural materials in his work in many ways defines his practice. The jewelry’s precious stones and gems were purchased by the artist during his extensive travels through South America, Oaxaca, and Peru, while the ceramic beads were brought to the United States from Japan. Little Mans, the earliest work in the exhibition, takes the incarnation of a necklace, and brings together constituent parts of clay, fine silver, amethyst, and leather into a simple abstracted charm that resembles a human figure.
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Alongside the jewelry, a selection of ceramics and acrylic paintings on salvaged redwood, driftwood, paper, and illustration board give additional context to the artist’s wide ranging practice and idiosyncratic language of forms. Blunk’s recurring use of elementary shapes—circles, arches, squares—speak to a philosophy of simplicity informed by his friendship with Isamu Noguchi and time spent studying under master ceramicists Rosanjin Kitaoji and Toyo Kaneshige in Japan in the 1950s. This quality, discernable too in his embrace of imperfection and asymmetry, emphasizes the most essential of all of Blunk’s tools—the human hand.
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Works
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About the Artist
JB Blunk in his studio in Inverness, California, c. 1968 -
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