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Barbara Bloom
Installation artist; sculptor
American
(Los Angeles, California, 1951 - )


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Biography

New York-based artist Barbara Bloom transforms ordinary objects and spaces into conceptual art installations that simultaneously question the nature of perception and investigate the shortfalls of today’s consumer-driven society. Bloom’s work focuses on the character of our information-rich culture and its attendant effects on our ability to differentiate between real and unreal. Playing on the allure of artifice and our unfailing desire to obtain visual proof, Bloom builds seductive and thought-provoking environments that prompt viewers to reconsider the notion that “seeing is believing.”

A native of Los Angeles, Bloom does not consider herself a maker of art objects as much as a collector of ordinary things, an interest that first surfaced during her teenage years when she was introduced to contemporary art through a close family friend who was also a collector. After high school, Bloom enrolled at the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) in Valencia, where she earned a B.F.A. in 1972. Following graduation, she traveled to Amsterdam, where she lived for ten years before moving to Berlin, Germany. While in Europe, Bloom secured several government-sponsored grants, which allowed her the freedom and financial stability to concentrate on her art. As a result, her work often speaks of European interests and, more recently, reveals a fascination with Chinese and Japanese culture, which she began to acquire in 1985 when she first visited Japan. Despite these eclectic influences, as critic Margot Mifflin aptly points out, Bloom ultimately “belongs to a distinctly American artistic generation, hatched in the ‘80s, whose focus is mass culture and its discontents.”1 Living in New York City since 1992, Bloom continues to negotiate the murky waters of such topical issues as voyeurism, information overload, and the deceptiveness of appearances in our media-saturated society.

In Esprit de l’Escalier (1988) deception is the chief theme. Literally translated from French, the title means “spirit of the stairs,” which is an idiomatic expression for the ideal retort that is only thought of after the perfect opportunity to deliver it has passed. Similar to the popular expression, Bloom’s installation reveals its thoughtful message only after the viewer has had the chance to experience, contemplate, and process the visual data. Divided into four linear rooms, this installation prompts viewers to consider the relationships among perception, sensation, and physical experiences. In the first of the four rooms, Bloom presents a series of framed objects—Braille writings, text published in minuscule type, and images of UFOs. In the center of the room, a saucer-shaped item sits on a stand, a pearl placed gently in its center. Directly above the sculpture floats a mysterious hologram of a pearl. The second room houses a table set with six plates, each decorated with a unique image of a Victorian séance. A series of backlit watermarked papers illustrating UFO photographs from newspapers are hung in the third room, while a circle of white hats levitates unnaturally in the fourth. Throughout all of the rooms, Bloom presents enigmatic evidence of the unseen in order to question the tenuous relationship between what is known through sight and what can be proven through experience. In the first room, for example, the presence of the Braille texts compels us to question the necessity of obtaining visual proof by asking us whether the reality of blind people is any less valid simply because they are unable to visually observe facts. In the second room, the séance imagery alludes to a time when psychic phenomena were sufficient evidence to prove the existence of things unseen. Likewise, the unnatural occurrences in the third and fourth rooms challenge us to look outside the parameters of our immediate existence and open our minds to possibility—to look beyond what is presented as “factual” and realize that seeing is not always believing. —L.W.

1. Margot Mifflin, “Barbara Bloom: My Work is Like a Movie Set,” ARTnews, February 1993, 102. (SJMA Selections publication, 2004)

Barbara Bloom lives and works in New York, NY.


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