Matthew Blum

Galleries

The Blum Museum of Art & Machinery

A continually expanding institution of images, objects, circuits, and questionable ideas.

Guided tour Images and Machinery

Stop 2 of 8 · Main Gallery

Piston

Exhibited in Nature and Machine (2022), bay 14A; and in Armature for Aperture (2024).

Room 01

Main Gallery

Major finished work and rotating exhibitions.

  1. Portrait in Motion. Two strips of black-and-white motion-picture film, every frame showing the same person standing in a park.
  2. 1956 Lincoln Premiere. Silver gelatin. Black-and-white close-up of the rear fender and tail fin of a dark car, with chrome trim and the word Premiere in script on its side.
  3. Typewriter. Close-up of round black typewriter keys lit from the side, the Q W E R T Y and A S D F rows receding.
    Piston. Dark-toned photograph with a mottled border of a broken engine piston standing upright, its connecting rod snapped off.
  4. Electron Tube. Black-and-white photograph of a large glass RCA electron tube lit against a black background.
  5. Mustang on 16mm. A strip of color 16mm film with repeated frames of a dark Mustang parked beside a snowbank, edge numbers printed along the side.
  1. Mushroom. Black-and-white photograph of pale shelf fungus growing in clusters up a dark tree trunk.
  2. Sea Shell. Black-and-white close-up of a large whelk shell resting on small pebbles.
  3. Kalmbach. Black-and-white photograph of tall, straight trunks in a pine forest, sunlight on the ground between them.
  4. Harvest. Black-and-white still life of a woven basket holding peppers, a pear and tomatoes on a wooden table.
  5. City Hall. Low-angle black-and-white view of a modernist building with rows of deep-set windows beside a curved wall, under a cloudy sky.
  1. Farmall. Print with brushed dark edges of the grille of an old tractor, the name FARMALL across its front.
  2. Fireman’s Drinking Fountain. Warm-toned photograph of a painted statue of a mustached firefighter in a helmet, holding a small child in one arm.
  3. Game Joystick. A black single-button game joystick photographed against a plain white background.
    Boombox. A silver Panasonic cassette boombox with two round speakers, photographed straight on against a pale background.

Untitled prints from Nature and Machine

  1. Untitled. Black-and-white photograph of a large willow silhouetted against bright, streaked clouds, the corners of the frame dark.
  2. Iris. Palladium. Warm-toned print with brushed dark edges of a single iris flower lit against a dark background.
  3. Untitled. Print with brushed dark edges of a white water lily open among green lily pads.
  4. Untitled. Print with brushed dark edges of three bison standing in a grassy field before a line of trees.
  5. Untitled. Small color print with brushed dark edges of a monarch butterfly on pink flowers against a blue sky.
  6. Untitled. Warm-toned print with brushed dark edges looking up a tall tree trunk into its bare branches.
  7. Untitled. Warm-toned print looking straight up at bare, crossing tree branches against a pale sky.
  8. Untitled. Warm-toned print with brushed dark edges of a leaning bare tree in snow beside a pond, long shadows across the snow.
  9. Untitled. Cyan-blue print of a lone bare tree standing in a grassy field.
  10. Untitled. Black-and-white photograph of a woman in a patterned sundress sitting in the grass against a tree, in dappled shade.
  11. Untitled. Color photograph of a woman in a long teal dress bending forward on a lawn among autumn trees.
  12. Untitled. Black-and-white photograph of a diesel locomotive on tracks beside a steel truss bridge, trees behind.
  13. Untitled. Print with brushed dark edges of an open grand piano in a wood-panelled room.