Barbara Bloom

David Lewis is pleased to present Works on Paper, on Paper, an exhibition of installations by Barbara Bloom, marking Bloom’s second exhibition with the gallery.

The exhibition is a companion to Bloom’s 2020 exhibition of the same title at Capitain Petzel, Berlin, which opened last March. The exhibition at David Lewis was originally scheduled to open in May of 2020 but was subsequently postponed due to the Covid-19 pandemic, and so we are, a year later, delighted to open this exhibition.

The works on view are composed of two series: Stand-Ins and Objects of Desire.

Stand-Ins, an ongoing body of work that Bloom began producing in the 1980s. Many of the works appear on an unfurled roll of seamless backdrop paper as a framing device, on which furniture is accompanied by particular objects and framed images. According to Bloom, these works “hover somewhere between sculpture, mise en scène, and the forensic clues left for a detective’s Perusal.”

Throughout her practice Bloom has explored the idea of tributes, and the ways in which one can conjure the presence of an absent person, or honor an intangible memory, through her work. Bloom has pondered the forms of memorials, commemoratives, and homages, and while these works take form in a realm that is close to portraiture, they are not portraits. This body of work is especially topical, as the feeling of an absent person has, over the course of the past year, taken on a whole new resonance and depth.

Objects of Desire, a series which Bloom debuted last year, considers objects as messengers between people, their capacity as carriers of meaning. Bloom is not a collector, but if she were, these would have been objects that she has coveted. The objects on view are not the originals of the ones she desires, but facsimiles, each displayed in a specific manner that infers the habits and actions of the original owner. Bloom prompts the viewer to consider the objects not just for their aesthetic, symbolic, or metaphoric qualities but as intermediaries between people.

Accompanying the exhibition is a small publication written by the artist, in which she examines the process and intention for each work presented. A forthcoming book, Works On Paper, On Paper, including text by writer Evan Moffitt, will be released in the Fall of 2021.