Jerry Bleem in The Unexpected Edge: Yugen in Contemporary Art

JERRY BLEEM

Jerry Bleem's sculptures were a perfect doorway for us in learning to erase the differences created by the mainstream between trained and untrained artists.  Obsessively made they occupy a space that few artists come close to. There is a male presence to them that is alpha and plainspoken. It was also Bleem and a few other artists that guided us toward the fact that though we respected traditional forms and the precise beauty of the conservative process; what we really wanted in the gallery was the creative edge; the iconoclasts, the artists whose work had that indefinable presence yugen begins to describe.