The Out There is Right Here: Ian Collings and the Bishop Pine Preserve @ Blunk Space

Blunk Space is pleased to present The Out There is Right Here, an exhibition of new works by Ian Collings alongside historic works by Bishop Pine Preserve artists JB Blunk, Gordon Onslow Ford, and John Anderson.

Created during Ian's time living and working at the Blunk House, the exhibition continues a dialogue between material, place, perception, and the cosmos. Sourcing wood and stone from the same landscapes that informed JB's practice, Ian explores the collapse of distance between the intimate and the infinite. He explains, "The ‘out there’ – the cosmic, the immeasurable, the unknown – is not elsewhere, but present within the immediate world of matter, physical forces, and perception.”

The exhibition is grounded in the history of the Bishop Pine Preserve, the name Gordon and his wife Jacqueline Johnson gave to the land they purchased in Inverness, California, where they first invited JB to build his home and studio, and later welcomed John.

While immersed in the atmosphere of the Bishop Pine Preserve, Ian produced sixteen unique works in conversation with the ethos of JB, Gordon, and John who were deeply engaged with intuitive mark-making, Eastern philosophy, and a lived relationship to the land. Historic paintings by the three artists further ground Ian's new work in the material and spiritual landscape of West Marin, where the boundaries between body, landscape, and cosmos remind us that what feels distant, “out there,” is always and already right here.