“Trip in Progress” Turns the Back Seat into a Dreamscape
by Robert Brune
At The Corner Gallery this Memorial Day weekend, internationally exhibited sculptor and painter Jeff Bliumis opened “Trip in Progress,” an ongoing body of paintings that quietly turns ordinary moments of travel into layered meditations on memory, culture, and imagination.
As gallery season surges back to life across the northern Catskills, Bliumis’ exhibition feels especially fitting for a region shaped by movement. Tourists, second homeowners, artists, and longtime residents all travel these winding roads daily, often caught in the contemplative stillness that arrives during long drives. Bliumis captures that psychological space with remarkable sensitivity.
The paintings in “Trip in Progress” began in 2018 and continue to evolve through the artist’s travels across different countries and cities. Most of the works are viewed from the perspective of the back seat of a vehicle. Drivers, mirrors, windows, steering wheels, warning labels, and passing landscapes become recurring visual anchors. Yet within those familiar interiors, Bliumis introduces drifting layers of symbolism, fragmented thoughts, dreamlike imagery, and subtle references to the cultures surrounding him.
“The whole space during that ride, you have time and your immediate environment transforms and you start daydreaming,” Bliumis explained during the opening reception. “You imagine things, you pass time. You think of things that they need to do. You’re in a totally different space when you’re driving.” That emotional and psychological drift becomes the true subject of the exhibition.
What initially appears to be straightforward figurative painting slowly reveals itself as something far more complex. Bliumis balances surrealist atmosphere with carefully structured realism, creating compositions that move between observation and subconscious reflection. The windshield may suddenly morph into a memory. A car seat begins resembling a human face. Road signs become philosophical warnings. Interior details dissolve into dreamlike narratives.
One particularly striking painting titled “Easy Pass” merges highway imagery with spiritual symbolism. Another work folds birds, faces, and floating fragments of thought into the interior of a moving vehicle. The paintings feel suspended between documentary and dream. “And sometimes they become paintings,” Bliumis said of the sketches collected during his travels. “It’s a journey.”
The exhibition also reveals Bliumis’ disciplined creative process. He described making rapid sketches while traveling, often capturing only brief moments lasting several minutes before later revisiting them in hotel rooms or studios. Those initial observations eventually evolve into large oil paintings layered with memory and emotional residue. “I make a very quick sketch,” he explained. “Then I can look at the sketch, I can add more to it. What my impression was of environment inside that car, for example, or what the day was like.”
For Bliumis, the medium itself is secondary to the physical act of creation. Though internationally recognized for both sculpture and painting, his philosophy toward art remains rooted in drawing and hand-built expression. “It’s more about the actual act of drawing,” he said. “Drawing and sculpting by hand, that’s my idea.”
That versatility has defined his decades-long career. Bliumis has exhibited internationally at major institutions and biennales spanning Moscow, Milan, Paris, London, Israel, South Korea, and New York. His work is held in significant public and private collections including the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and the Moscow Museum of Modern Art. Yet despite that global reach, Bliumis has remained deeply connected to the Catskills through his Andes-based Tree of Life Art Foundry, where he has helped both established and emerging artists realize sculptural projects for decades.
Inside the Corner Gallery, however, the emphasis remained intimate rather than monumental. The strength of “Trip in Progress” lies in how relatable its emotional terrain becomes. Nearly everyone understands the peculiar mental state of staring through a car window while thoughts drift between memory, responsibility, fantasy, and observation. Bliumis transforms that universal experience into something poetic without becoming sentimental.
The paintings ask viewers to slow down and notice the fleeting psychological spaces we often overlook. In a culture dominated by distraction and speed, “Trip in Progress” quietly insists that even the most routine moments of travel contain hidden layers of humanity, reflection, and imagination.
