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Bio
Airom grew up in the Australian bush. Embarrassed about not owning a television, he would make up imaginary television shows to tell his school mates. This reliance on imagination played a big part to the development of his creative process.
Heavy oil paint with a series of transparent glazes and a subtle interplay of forming moods resulting in a soft organic surface as well as themes of fostering and nurturing, development thought formation, acquisition and growth are common to Airom’s work. His work is a balance between actual nature and desired nature, success and humility and social relationships. Airom’s process is to build a slow-motion cycle of thought-feeling interactions, he will create several sedimentary layers responding to thoughts as they form and different moods they evoke, and make this process visible, scumbling and glazing to reveal the history and interplay of one layer and the next, hoping to create a stirring a circling between sensation and contemplation in the viewer.
‘…a kind of assured hesitancy is common to all of Bleicher’s oil paintings…These are open-ended visual conundrums presented with a feeling of innocent pleasure…You can compare this art to surrealism… or Philip Guston’s later work but that is like hanging a tag or
delimiting label on something primal, inherently itself and whole….These images are produced as a balancing act over the gr eat divide between the conscious and unconscious mind… Their virtue is that they represent a freely ranging hybrid, unfinished and unaccountable.’
-Ray Zone, ArtScene Magazine
‘….seemingly spontaneous gestured, scumbled technique. The dynamic balancing of objects that leave open wide interpretations of the narrative. The richness of the layered colors enhance the deeply personal psychological themes. A primitive and at
the same time sophisticated and elaborate world of stylized objects and beings playing out their interior visual games.’
-David Genovesi
Artist Statement:
My art explores the interaction between the conceptual conscious intentional natures and primal emotive impulses. I apply my past work and study in experimental cognitive psychology to the canvass and to conceptual installation, visually representing schematized concepts as they would be in the human mind in the process of being brought from memory and applied to sensual building blocks. I respond to these schemata borrowing from techniques of early, abstract and post-expressionists. I continue this process, taking these and responding to them, incorporating them into large installations exploring particular types of psychological phenomena or conducting psychological experiments using the pieces as stimuli. The end result is a slow-motion cycle of conceptual-expressive interactions, hopefully stirring a circling between sensation and contemplation.
Artist CV
AIROM
Airomworks.com
8055093100 text preferred.
airombleicher@gmail.com
Press/Publications
- Jan 2008 I Propose (Elias and Joy ep)- TV. Style Network.
- October 2007- LA Times pick of the week.
- October 2007- LA Weekly.
- October 2007- VegNews Magazine
- September 2007- Downtown Art News
- August 2007- Citizen LA, California
- March 2007- Manhattan Times, New York.
- July 2006- Citizen LA, California.
- June 2006- ArtScene magazine, Southern California.
- June 2005-VC reporter, Ventura California.
- Triple J, Australia. Sound Quality: interview.
- Triple J, Australia. Home and Hosed: interview.
- Syndicated interview. ‘Electronica Is…’ Australian-wide. AMRAP sponsored.
Large Installations and Solo Shows
Summer 2015 Spectrum Gestalt 2, bG Gallery, Santa Monica CA.
Jan 2011 AMT. Caporale Bleicher Gallery La Brea, LA CA.
Jan 2010 Bleicher/Golightly Gallery, Santa Monica CA. Part of the Australian Government Ambassadorial G’day USA events.
May 2009, Audis Husar Gallery, Beverly Hills CA. Airom Bleicher and Carol Powell.
May 2008, Accolades Gallery, Ventura CA. Featured Artist. New paintings and sculpture.
September 2007, Art Murmur Gallery, LA. Animal-esque. Full gallery collaborative installation with Jim Holyoak and Alex Schaefer exploring Human-Animal interconnection .
April 2007 ‘micro-gestalt’ Two07 Gallery, New York City, NY. Created and co-curated by Bleicher, a reinterpretation of the collaborative LA installation, which is slowly becoming a traveling, formally evolving exhibit.
Jan 2007 ‘micro-gestalt’ Orphanage Gallery, LA. Collaborative installation conceived by Bleicher composed from over 400 small works on canvass spanning the entire gallery and coming together in a single pulsating piece. Inspired by contemporary psychological interpretations of Gestalt and ontological philosophy.
June 2006- ‘A Strange Time for Summer’, Solo show, BAA Gallery, Ventura CA. Paintings exploring displacement were interspersed with ink line drawings on Wittgenstein texts.
March 2006- ‘Broken Arms, Long Shadows’ Kristi Engle Gallery, LA. Collaborative Installation. Collaborations with Mike Saijo and Jim Holyoak. These works were an exploration of history as represented in human memory. The images were installed in an associative connectionist matrix throughout the gallery.
December 2005-February 2006- Solo show, The Render Gallery, Ventura CA
Performances
October 2007. Art Murmur Gallery, LA. Animal-esque Phase 2. Curated and composed video art and multi media performances exploring human-animal interconnection.
April 2007. “five tiny hums: a gestalt performance” Two07 Gallery, New York City, NY. Similar to the LA nine tiny hums performance but this time using an alternate scale and instrumentalists (bass clarinet, vocals and dobro).
March 2007. “nine tiny hums: a gestalt performance” Found Gallery, LA. A gestalt game and musical sound experiment, musicians (oud, cello, violin, flute and guitar) rotated around the corners of the gallery facing the artwork creating a moving sea of sound. Performers were asked to improvise using limited, harmonically devised scales hidden in the corners of the gallery.
April 2006- Kristi Engle Gallery, LA. Three Blind Nodes. Three musicians were blindfolded and deafened to each other and placed in alternate corners of the gallery as they performed to Bleicher’s ‘Nodes’ composition, played to them on headphones.
Notable Group Shows
2009
April, Julie Rico Gallery, LA, CA
2008
August. Julie Rico Gallery, LA, CA
Jan. Red Dot Gallery, LA, CA
2007
Mar. Bonhams and Butterfields, Holywood, CA. Get:Art
April. Red Dot Gallery, LA
2006
Dec. Pharmaka Gallery, LA
2005
M.J. Higgins Gallery, LA
2nd St Gallery, LA
Billy Rose Gallery, Ventura Harbor Village, CA
Harbor Village Gallery. Ventura, CA
May. VAU Gallery, Ventura CA
April. Buenaventura Gallery, Ventura, CA
April. VAU Gallery, Ventura CA. 5 Senses exhibition.
2004
Render Gallery. Ventura CA November. Lankershim Gallery, North Hollywood, CA
Oct. Lankershim Gallery, Hollywood LA.
Oct. SPARC Gallery, Venice LA
Sept Los Angeles Center for Digital Art (LACDA)
August. Buenaventura Gallery
August. -Render Gallery, Ventura CA
Aug. California State Fine Art Competition Exhibition, Sacramento CA.
July. Bottoms Art Galleries collection, State Street Santa Barbara
July. SCIART Gallery, Camarillo, CA
Awards/Grants
2005
– Buenaventura Gallery, Juried; Merit Award.
2004
– California State Fine Art Competition; Finalist. Mention of Honor.
2003
– Australia Council Grant received for a project involving the recording of a large body of cello, vocal, guitar and electronic improvisations; Successfully completed.
– Noise Media Festival Chosen sound project was promoted across Australia wide public and private media sources (e.g. Radio National, Triple J) including interviews and airplay.
– Q-Music Inc. (Queensland Australia): Small grant received for purchase of promotional materials for electronic sound projects; Successfully completed.
Reviews/Press
‘…a kind of assured hesitancy is common to all of Bleicher’s oil paintings…These are open-ended visual conundrums presented with a feeling of innocent pleasure…You can compare this art to surrealism… or Philip Guston’s later work but that is like hanging a tag or delimiting label on something primal, inherently itself and whole….These images are produced as a balancing act over the great divide between the conscious and unconscious mind… Their virtue is that they represent a freely ranging hybrid, unfinished and unaccountable.’
-Ray Zone, ArtScene Magazine
‘…. seemingly spontaneous gestured, scumbled technique. The dynamic balancing of objects that leave open wide interpretations of the narrative. The richness of the layered colors enhance the deeply personal psychological themes. A primitive and at the same time sophisticated and elaborate world of stylized objects and beings playing out their interior visual games.’
-David Genovesi
Jan 2008 “I Propose” Style Network, Elias and Joy episode
October 2007- Los Angeles Times
October 2007- LA Weekly
October 2007- VegNews Magazine
September 2007- Downtown Art News
August 2007- Citizen LA, California
March 2007- Manhattan Times, New York.
July 2006- Citizen LA, California.
June 2006- ArtScene magazine, Southern California.
June 2005-VC reporter, Ventura California.
-
- Triple J, Australia. Sound Quality: interview.
- Triple J, Australia. Home and Hosed: interview.
- Syndicated interview. ‘Electronica Is…’ Australian-wide. AMRAP sponsored.
Exhibits
Past exhibits at bG that Airom has participated in.
