Aleph & Zahir
"According to Borges, the Aleph is a point in space that contains all other spaces all together. Anyone who looks at it can see clearly and all at once the entire universe from every possible angle without being disoriented. Zahir is quite the opposite. It can be an object or a person that has the power to materialize an obsession in the mind of everyone who sees it. The person affected by Zahir perceives lesser reality and more of the Zahir, at first only while asleep, then at all times. So whereas viewing the Aleph causes the observer to see all things, viewing the Zahir causes the observer eventually to see nothing but it. The world Jeff Bliumis sees is the staging of both this perpetual dynamic and inexhaustible principles. Bliumis is convinced that art is an activity founded on immediacy and on the evidence of the supremacy of each one’s unique imagination and senses over common sense, rules, and doctrines. The artist creates visual images, frames selected details of the life he witnesses. He sketches on his notebooks rapid drawings of people and places that become in his studio paintings and sculptures. Each one fools us with images that are tropes, visual metaphors meant to provoke the viewers’ mind and sight and bring out the ambiguities of our perception. Bliumis’ metaphorical imagination is driven solely by the wish to understand, to grasp the significance of the characters’ actions, the meaning of the situation in which they find themselves. He does not only express in a visual image what is happening but rather each work expresses an ineffable existential situation.”
Excerpt from “Raise a glass, a toast to the art of Jeff Bliumis”, by Jennifer Bacon, Ottavio Camenzio, Filippo Fossati and Lorena Ypostegui, Migrant Press, Bossolasco, Italy 2021