Harry Lum: Review

Lum’s exhibit consists of about a dozen largish canvases, which were originally conceived and are arranged here so that they can be viewed either singly or in sequence, as variations on a theme. Bowing slightly in the direction of Jasper Johns, Lum sets both his pictorial and dramatic idea with a “Tenement,” painted in a sort of “New Realist” manner—broadly brushed but plainly representational. As an allegorical image, this dreary container for Everyman embraces the two antithetical motifs figured in the other works: “ovens” and “bodies.” The rectangular image of the “Tenement” also sets the formal theme of the series. As it devolves to the centered squares of the “ovens,” on to the squared circles of the “bodies,” from the ashy grey to the garish pink, from the quiescent to the frenzied, its significance becomes all too plain. In fact it would be too much—too literal, too obvious, too pitiful—if it were not that these paintings are also meaningful as paintings.

Boice, Bruce. Artforum, April 1963.

Harry Lum at Berkeley Gallery, San Francisco

Harry Lum's painting is a strong, full-bodied image that connotes the figure by suggesting its bulk and physical reality rather than by painting it directly (although he occasionally does resort to the form of the body as well as its substance). In some places Lum seems to be picking up from Bacon and Giacometti.

Abstract expressionism has generally shown an insistence on physical and visual values. Lum accepts these values and carries them over into his loosely figurative subject matter more successfully than many New York painters, notably Elaine de Kooning, have been able to do.

Magloff, Joanna C. Artforum, January 1964.

Harry Lum: San Francisco

In his large paintings, Lum drapes new chicken skin to resemble mini shapes, all suggestive of human situations. The crux of his show is three huge paintings inspired by a visit to a chicken parts factory. Taking them numerically, there is the denuding machine, full of beer parts, from which some blood drips, and a few white feathers, ascend, like souls leaving the body. A morgue with bodies in a state of rigor mortis, one of which resembles a grizzly deposition, and finally, a disarrangement of stripped parts, in which all identity is lost. All, that is, except the Pearly skin, which is Lum’s interest at the moment, and one feels as if he has just witnessed a martyrdom rather than a preparation of a food stuff.

Polley, Elizabeth M. Artforum, January 1965

Harry Lum, New Works

In some large canvases, on which the paint is not yet dry (literally, for Lum prefers oils to acrylics), representing Lum's most immediately recent direction, it is not merely difficult to read metaphorical allusions, but simply difficult to read at all; with some squinting, shifting of position and almost strained scanning. of the canvas one may detect the familiar vocabulary of Lum's landscape themes-the ravines, the mountains and roads, now stated entirely in brushwork modulations of a thin white impasto-and an occasional revival of the "perennial metaphor." Here and there a barely perceptible elision into a very white value of grey aids brush work in defining shape-but seldom. The paintings however are skillfully manipulated studies in that difficult if not altogether unprecedented tour de force, "white-on-white " and reward scrutiny.

French, Palmer. Artforum, Summer 1968

More literally than most artists, Harry Lum sees the forms of landscape as a woman’s body, seductively displayed and sexually inviting. A series of 11 light boxes at the Berkeley Gallery vary from square to horizontal and from less than 2 feet across to as much as 3 feet by 4, but consistently explore this theme.

The boxes hold translucent cutouts. Behind frosted plexiglass, these build compound forms and shadows of pale, almost uncolored, warm and cool light. In one box a road cut its way between two sloping hills, The first in a series that fades out against a sunlit sky. Two of the hills are breasts, and the sun is a symbolic woman’s head. The road is both a road, the separating line that defines her lakes, and a phallic form that rushes up into her body. in another of the lightbox is a group of similar forms is a woman, again abstractly generalized, and at the same time stream that rushes down between the canyon walls 

Most of the images are primarily landscapes in some of the sky is the center of interest. Formalized clouds flow across the surface or drift outward from a central sun, as if they were the hair surrounding a woman’s face. In these the shapes tend to lose the force of the landscapes, becoming almost a formal decoration, less interesting than the strongly felt body forms. It is as though compounding softness of women flesh with billowing clouds, makes the whole work to amorphous, not assertive enough for the medium Lum uses.

McCann, Cecile N. Art Week, May 22, 1971

Harry Lum, Contrast of Material and Light

Imagine capturing something as elusive as a cloud and tacking it onto a gallery wall. In a sense, Harry Lum does just that at the Seder-Creigh Gallery. His recent spray formed fiberglass pieces deal with the iconography of clouds and the various interpretation of their forms, while making statements about materiality and physicality.

Evolving from his lightbox series of the early 1970s, Lum’s works have become less literary and referential since he’s been in San Diego. He has been involved with exploring a sense of effervescence by using nothing more than light. The translucency of the spray formed, fiberglass cloud, formations, often executed in soft flesh or base stones, refracts, and reflect surrounding light. Together, the pieces create an environment that jumps from soft, blues and sand colors to aquamarines, to Prussion Blues, and combinations of each. 

Lum sets up contradictions between loose, ethereal cloud forms, and the mechanical connecting devices of strapped fiberglass, and the cold metallic quality of the grommets. In each piece and a regular horizontal form or two usually floats on the gallery wall, then is blatantly tackled by a large “X” or cross rectangular straps. It seems incredible to me that the floating, brittle forms in works like Mismatched Cloud and Flying X survived through all the interlacing, moldings, strappings, and grommets. 

Lum develops another dichotomy in these pieces between the luscious solid surfaces and the broken down fibers that appear to be encrusted with needles that project from and spill out beyond the surface. As the fibers are broken up in tentacle light projections around the edges, they appear to grasp of the environment, clawing in both menacing and lyrical movements. 

In several works, Lum develops balance systems between lettrist and fiberglass forms. Through the devices of projecting squares, painted numbers and letters, molded, stenciled “A’s” and grommets, he accents the translucent surfaces. In Equation there appears to be a play on the letter “A” as the total strapped fiberglass form makes an “A” within an “A.” Other works have Albers-esque squares within squares. The “A” signifying alpha, seems to be omnipresent at the apex of many of the works and is centered in Mismatched Cloud. (Humorously, Lum stencils his initials and the year on a separate piece of fiberglass which then grommets to the work.).

When I spoke with Lum, he mentioned a strong analogy his pieces have to the work of Mozart. “My pieces remind me of Mozart in that they are both gay and melancholy. They have a crazy precision, yet simultaneously they are loose and free. Often there is a different feeling and mood – a sense of contrasting, melancholy as in the Magic Flute, where the opening there is a semi religious attitude, and at the same time the humor comes through.” 

These analogies are most appropriate while visiting Lum’s works. His light emitting pieces have a strong sense of presence – I felt as if I were part of a new environment in which Lum had captured the evasive forms we so readily dismissed as beyond our grasp. In this exhibition, the materiality definitely overrides the intangible.

Preisman, Fran. Artweek, December 18, 1976.

At the Galleries

A new gallery has opened in an unlikely place, the Standard Brands Paint and Home Decorating Center at 16th and Broadway. It’s a small space but professional looking. Its second show features the work of two respected San Diego artists, Ron Tatro and Harry Lum, both instructors at Grossmont College.

Lum shows relief paintings made of fiberglass tinted in the subtlest blues, greens and yellow, like old ceramics. Their abstract referential images with poetically, spare stencil, text encapsulate events from the history of the artist’s family in China. The lines “Robes of office/ Pride of generations/ Now silken patches/ On peasant smocks,” for example, refer to the destruction of heirloom garments to repair workers clothes. Even without the historical background, visitors would appreciate Lum‘s handsomely formal, ethereal, visual statements that employ contemporary materials for the expression of old traditions.

McDonald, Robert. Los Angeles Times, November 15, 1985