Jeremy Blake 1971-2007

Jeremy Blake, 35, video artist, is believed to have taken his own life by drowning at a beach in the Rockaways in New York on July 17. A New York police department spokesperson said that his body was found 4 1/2 miles away in the waters off Sea Girt, N.J., on July 22. Blake's death followed the suicide on July 10 of his girlfriend of 12 years, filmmaker Theresa Duncan. The final entry on her blog, The Wit of the Staircase (theresalduncan.typepad.com), was posted the day of her death. The artist was thought to be devastated by Duncan's death. His clothes, wallet and a note referring to Duncan's suicide were found on the beach on July 17, and witnesses reported seeing him walk into the water.

The couple was described by friends as extremely close. In February they returned to New York from Los Angeles, where they had moved about five years earlier. They had collaborated, with Karen Kilimnik, on the 1999 animated film The History of Glamour, which was written and directed by Duncan. Blake also created sequences for the 2002 film Punch-Drunk Love, and at the time of his death was working with Rockstar Games as an in-house designer.

Blake was born in Fort Sill, Okla. He grew up in Maryland and attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the California Institute of Arts, where he earned a master's degree in 1995. He is best known for abstract video installations and digital "paintings" that combine representational imagery with intense, colorful visual effects. His works have been seen in three Whitney Biennials (2000-04), and in a solo show at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 2005, in addition to numerous international galleries. An upcoming exhibition of "Cinematic Portraits," some in collaboration with Malcolm McLaren, is scheduled to open on Oct. 27 at the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, D.C. [through Mar. 2, 2008]. It is unclear whether a show of new work scheduled for November at Kinz, Tillou + Feigen in New York, where Blake has shown since 1999, will take place.

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