Joel Tomlin & Morris Graves

May 20 – June 25, 2023

Blunk Space is pleased to present Joel Tomlin & Morris Graves, an exhibition of new sculptures by Tomlin and paintings by Graves from the 1940s. The works in this exhibition spark a conversation between past and present and allude to Arcadian worlds and inner visions that share a vocabulary of symbolism – cups, chalices, birds, moons, and flowers. Northup Frye’s study of William Blake, Fearful Symmetry, brings to mind the pursuits of both artists: “A visionary creates or dwells in a higher spiritual world in which the objects of perception in this one have become transfigured and charged with a new intensity of symbolism. This is quite consistent with art, because it never relinquishes the visualization which no artist can do without.” Tomlin’s and Graves’s works are curiously familiar; some of the forms and compositions recall Egyptian, Greek, and African art, but their scale and surface treatments are truly original.

Morris Graves (1910–2001) was a Modernist artist from the Pacific Northwest described by critic Clement Greenberg in1945 as “one of the most original American painters.” His compositions depict natural and human-made forms – birds, trees, flowers, vessels – and creatures of the imagination, abstract shapes from the “sky of the mind.” The two paintings in the exhibition were completed in 1941 and 1943, a period during which Graves’s work was becoming more widely appreciated. In 1942, thanks to the efforts of curator Dorothy C. Miller, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York acquired ten paintings of his for their permanent collection. The birds in his paintings from this time are expressions of his spirit, forms set against backgrounds suggestive of nature’s power. “I paint to rest from the phenomena of the external world – to pronounce it – and to make notations of its essences,” Graves said.

His work is a synthesis of diverse elements inspired by the wild and remote pacific Northwest and by the geographically adjacent Asian cultures, specifically Japan. Graves traveled to Japan several times and his interest in Japanese art embraced its religious and philosophical underpinnings. In the late 1930s, Graves adopted a technique of applying tempera and gouache to thin Japanese or Chinese paper. The implements and processes of the craft were of utmost importance to him. The hand of the artist is always evident in his creations.  

Like Graves, London-based artist Tomlin finds the natural world to be a special source of forms that in his work assume an almost spiritual meaning.Tomlin is an avid walker, and he uses salvaged materials collected from the River Thames and the backstreets of London’s East End to compose his sculptures. This approach to combining disparate found objects and materials enriches the compositions and blurs the relationship between object and artwork. His pieces have what he describes as "conversational attributes," a sense of one piece communicating with another, or relationships building between things. The works encourage an anthropomorphic reading, especially in the arrangement of multiple objects, and his creations look like they could have emerged from one of Graves’s paintings.

Tomlin worked at a foundry in East London for over twenty-five years. He’s noted that his time in the foundry affected the way he approaches process. “Have I touched it enough or too little? Bronze is the most fascinating material, and casting it is alchemical,” he explains. “Something exists, is burned away and reappears as a metal that is associated with an epoch of human development (Bronze Age). I think that subconsciously I want to give the salvaged wooden sculptures the same depth and lustre of a bronze cast, so that they occupy the same hierarchy.”

Graves sought to communicate “clues to guide our journey” by means of his own “realized symbols.” As they were for Carl Jung and JB Blunk, symbols for Graves are manifestations of other levels of reality. For Tomlin, certain forms might carry a symbolic suggestion, but for all the story-telling potential that these sculptures carry, any actual narrative is left to be determined by the viewer. The works in this exhibition continue a tradition of Francisco de Zurbaráan and Giorgio Morandi, painters who cultivated the austerity and symbolism of vessels, fruits, and flowers, and created still lifes which seem endowed with secret messages, reminding us of the mystery of art. Like these masters, Tomlin and Graves are consummate observers – interpreting the worlds around them, natural and human-made, into painted and sculpted forms. They find quietude in nature and materials and create a solitary space. In this exhibition, there is a united act of contemplation that shapes reality. Their sculpted and painted figures are in the process of transforming from one thing to another, a reminder of the evanescence of form. 

Morris Graves (1910–2001) lived most of his life in the Pacific Northwest. He was one of the earliest Modern artists from this region to achieve national and international acclaim. He traveled extensively and his time in Japan was especially influential. Works by Graves are in the collections of MoMA, The Morris Graves Museum, Art Institute of Chicago, and LACMA, and have been exhibited extensively including MoMA (1942), Whitney Museum (1956), and the Seattle Art Museum (2014).

Joel Tomlin (b.1969, Sheffield, UK), lives and works in London. Tomlin studied painting at Chelsea College of Art. Departing from painting, he now sculpts with a variety of materials, mostly wood and bronze, often with painted or patinated surfaces. Tomlin worked as a blacksmith for over twenty-five years and has exhibited in the UK, Switzerland, and the US.